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Change outlook, says Cameron

Hasan Suroor

Blair is stuck in the past, says new Conservative leader

LONDON: New Conservative Party leader David Cameron has warned his party colleagues that they must change the way they "think, look'' and "behave'' if they are serious about returning to power.

In his first speech, after defeating his senior colleague and shadow home secretary David Davis by an unexpectedly huge margin, Mr. Cameron mocked the party's male-dominated culture calling it "scandalous''.

"Nine out of 10 Conservative MPs, like me, are white men. We need to change the scandalous under-representation of women in the Conservative Party and we'll do that,'' he said.

In a barbed attack on the party's image as an organisation of crusty, upper-class men, Mr. Cameron said merely talking about change was not going to help.

"We need to change the way we think... and we need to change the way we behave,'' he declared saying that what the country was looking for was a Conservative Party that was "decent, reasonable and sensible.''

Making his first appearance in the Commons in his new role as the Leader of the Opposition, he offered to work "together'' with the Government on issues of national importance such as its controversial education reforms.

His maiden encounter with Prime Minister Tony Blair during the Prime Minister's Question Hour on Wednesday was billed as his first big test after taking over the reins of the party and there was palpable relief on Tory benches that he emerged from it without too many scratches.

Mr. Cameron tried hard to live up to his promise of dispensing with "point-scoring'' and "name-calling'' but minutes into his speech and he appeared to lose temper accusing the Labour Party's chief whip of "shrieking like a child.'' He also had a dig at Mr. Blair saying he was a man "stuck in the past,'' and suggesting that he no longer represented the future.

"I want to talk about the future... you were the future once,'' he told Mr. Blair.

Mr. Blair refused to be provoked and while welcoming the new spirit of consensus, promised by Mr. Cameron, he made clear that he did not intend to compromise on his Government's core agenda.

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