Howard sells off Tory HQ

Michael Howard today prepared to set the seal on his new style Tories - by selling off the party headquarters.

The move, expected within days, will raise a hefty sum for the cashstrapped Conservatives. But the leadership hopes it will also mark a clean break with the past. The Conservatives have occupied their base at

Central Office in Smith Square, minutes away from the Commons, for 45 years. Once the home of the most formidable election machine in the country, in recent years it was scarred by poisonous feuds, backbiting, revolts and sackings.

The sale of the long lease, which has been on the cards for some time, will reportedly raise £6million for party funds. But it will also be a significant fresh-start gesture from the new leader. The party is expected to move into rented property in central London.

Mr Howard also moved to heal past divisions by recruiting some of the party's most senior figures - including former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke - to work alongside his slimmed-down shadow cabinet.

Mr Clarke will join three former leaders - John Major, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith - in a "wise men" group of advisers. They will also take a frontbench role in the Commons at times.

Today Mr Howard began preparations for his own first Commons confrontation with Tony Blair tomorrow at Prime Minister's Questions. Tories were cautiously confident that he would make a swift and more decisive impact than Mr Duncan Smith had managed. Labour's counterattack, however, was already under way.

Party Chairman Ian McCartney derided the fact that it took two members of the 12-strong Shadow Cabinet to run the Tory party, as joint chairmen, while responsibility for the NHS, schools, colleges and universities was all combined in a single figure, shadow health and education secretary Tim Yeo.

The Tories retorted that Mr Yeo, like other shadow cabinet members wearing several Whitehall hats at once, was supported by a strong frontbench team.

But Mr Howard himself appeared to recognise that the new set-up might cause confusion when he warned that it was not a model for an incoming Conservative government. The line-up, completed yesterday evening, numbered some significant figures left out under Mr Duncan Smith, including Nicholas Soames, a grandson of Sir Winston Churchill, as shadow defence secretary, outside the shadow cabinet, and John Bercow as spokesman on international development.