Conservative clash on drift to the Right

Conservative divisions widened today as rival leadership camps clashed over the direction of the party.

David Willetts, a leading moderniser, said the Tories could only win power by "trumping Tony Blair" on the centre ground of politics.

Warning against a drift to the Right, Mr Willetts called on his party to copy Mr Blair's social justice agenda.

This put him at odds with David Davis, the frontrunner to succeed Mr Howard, who urged the party not to chase the "ebbing tide" of Blairism.

Setting out his vision, Mr Davis said it must not abandon "timeless Tory principles". The Conservatives, he said, would "earn nothing but ridicule" if they appear not to be interested in "changing the way the country works".

To highlight a deepening split between modernisers and traditionalists, Kenneth Clarke used a weekend interview to attack Mr Davis's "Right-wing" backers.

The drift to the Right was "why we seem incapable of getting more than a third of the vote," he told BBC News 24.