In the 1970s, my mother, who was for many years the Treasurer of the local RNLI, went into a pub in Barnsley collecting for the lifeboats, and came face-to-face with miners' leader Arthur Scargill, then at the height of his influence.

"Don't worry, love," he said to her. "When my Labour mates and I come to power, you won't have to collect money any more because we'll have the lifeboats nationalised."

"Yes," said my mother. "And then they'll no doubt be on strike – so get your hand in your pocket and get your money in that lifeboat."

There is a directness about us northerners, and a refusal to be taken for granted. There is a readiness to answer back.

For northern Conservatives, it is time to answer back. I have for years been determined that the Conservative Party will not be a party of the South and the Midlands but will be a party of the whole of England and the whole United Kingdom.

We have often been told by out-of-date commentators that, yes, of course, the Tories can win in southern England, but you know, they can make no progress in the North.

We can. We have some of the best councillors and candidates. And I believe too that our northern revival will be part of the great national triumph of our party.

I have been very busy these last two months on the floor of the House of Commons, calling for trust, honesty and integrity in politics. The only party that has been true to its promise to vote for a referendum on the European treaty has been the Conservative Party.

The Prime Minister who did not have the courage to call the election he had planned is the same Prime Minister who does not have the honour to call the referendum that he promised.


The only thing he has been able to decide upon is to run away from ever consulting the people.

When the Conservatives met at Blackpool last October, talking of nothing but an imminent election, Neil Kinnock said the Tories would be "ground in to the dust". A triumphalist Kinnock – a sure sign that everything was about to come to grief.

For it turned out within hours that the Prime Minister who
had calculated on an early election before he was found
out had been rumbled already; that the leader who had
prepared for the battle did not have the bottle to begin it; and it has since turned out that he is the same leader who agrees a European Treaty but can't
decide whether to attend the ceremony, calls a minister incompetent but couldn't decide whether to sack him, calls a review of round the clock drinking but then can't decide to go ahead and put a stop to it as he should; this is the Prime Ditherer of the nation.

He reminds me of the American state Governor who once said: "I'm not indecisive. Or am I?"

Perhaps this is no surprise, but for me the truly astounding fact is that a Cabinet without John Prescott and Margaret Beckett is less competent than the Cabinet when they were in it.

Not only have they lost the bank account details of every family in the country and let out thousands of criminals early because they failed to plan for prison places, but we have a Home Secretary who is scared to walk down the street and a Chancellor who appeared to have dreamt he was delivering the Budget and then woke up to find that he was.

The truth about this Government's time in office is that after 11 years of false announcements, re-announcements and non-announcements, after more than a decade of cynical half-truths and spin, we have a country judged to be the worst developed nation on earth for children to grow up in, where places at good schools have to be allocated by lottery, and where the finest pension system in the world has been taxed into ruins.

Wherever I go as Shadow Foreign Secretary, I am emboldened and heartened by one thing above all: that wherever in the world you see better schools, finer healthcare or lower crime rates, it is Conservative ideas that have brought it about.

Gordon Brown has run from a General Election. But, within two years, there will be nowhere left for him to hide. And, as the weeks go by, you can be assured that Conservatives in the North will do our bit, and perhaps more than our bit, to answer the call of the millions of our fellow citizens who know it is time for change.


William Hague is the Shadow Foreign Secretary and Richmond MP. This is an edited extract of a speech he delivered to the Conservatives' spring forum in Gateshead.