BRITAIN: The Tory leader, Mr Iain Duncan Smith, promised "less politics in people's lives" yesterday as he continued his effort to reposition the Conservative Party as the champion of first-class public services.
Having earlier signalled his eagerness to break with the past - describing the waning relevance of Lady Thatcher's legacy to his party's future - Mr Duncan Smith made no reference to tax cuts as he instructed his party to concentrate on "the issues that make most difference in people's lives - health, education and transport".
Hinting at major policy initiatives to come on crime and health - which, he said, had become "some of the prime sources of insecurity in our lives" - Mr Duncan Smith's speech to a business audience in Birmingham followed the shadow chancellor, Mr Michael Howard's earlier recasting of the party's tax and spending priortities.
It was also being seen as an attempt to sustain a sharpened interest in the party's ongoing policy review, following the shadow home secretary Mr Oliver Letwin's calls for a more "neighbourly society" to help cut crime, and the party's successful out-flanking of the Blair government on the issues of a largely elected Lords and the deportation of asylum-seekers to Zimbabwe.
Mr Duncan Smith denounced Labour for governing as "control freaks", emasculating parliament, assuming ever greater powers to dictate the details of work in the country's schools and hospitals, and taking Railtrack back into state control. The Conservatives, he said, would promote diversity and choice, and allow teachers and doctors the discretion needed to do their own jobs.
"Our policies will reduce compulsion by the state and ensure that whenever government exercises power it is effectively scrutinised and the rights of individuals are protected."
The Conservative leader told his audience: "People don't want grand schemes and elegant theories. What people want, in fact expect, is something much more simple and yet far more difficult to achieve. They want us to give them the freedom to make life better, to help them when required and to get out of the way when we are not."
At the heart of "the most far-reaching renewal" of Tory policies for a generation, he said, lay the need to trust the instincts and values of the British people: "Trust the people has always been a powerful Conservative rallying cry. It has never let us down in the past, and it will not now."
However as Mr Duncan Smith spoke, his party chairman, Mr David Davis, was having to make light of a letter by front-bencher Mr John Bercow in which he told constituents the party was still seen by voters "as racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-youth".
Mr Charles Clarke, Labour chairman and cabinet minister, said Mr Duncan Smith's speech had failed to make clear whether he continued to favour reducing tax to as low as 35 per cent of GDP with the reductions in public spending that would entail.