Opposition Conservative leader Michael Howard attacked British Prime Minister Tony Blair's credibility on Iraq, in a speech Tuesday aimed at reviving his party's sagging fortunes before general elections expected next year.
In his first Conservative Party conference speech since becoming leader last year, Howard, 63, also sought to shore up support from eurosceptics who have been defecting to an emerging anti-European Union party.
Desperately low in opinion polls with a general election possible as soon as next May, Howard promised a "clear timetable for action" and outlined initiatives on education, pensions, immigration and crime.
But the greatest applause came when he lit into Blair for being "all talk" and having been "swept away with his rhetoric and his dreams".
"What people want from their politicians is accountability, responsibility, and a little humility," Howard said after entering the conference hall to a standing ovation. That was, he said, "the very opposite of what we've had from Tony Blair."
Although the Conservatives backed the decision to go to war in Iraq, he again criticised Blair for not being honest about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
"In the run-up to the war Tony Blair did not tell the truth," he said. "He did not give a truthful account of the intelligence he received."
"He did not behave as a British prime minister should," he said.
"I hope that we will not face another war," he said. "What if this prime minister asks us to trust him again? Could the British public trust him again?"
With the elections around the corner, Howard has little time to reverse the flagging fortunes of the former right-wing flagship party, which is trailing badly in opinion polls and last week came an embarrassing fourth in a by-election won by Blair's ruling Labour party.
The veteran former home secretary hammered in the word "accountability" and said stressed core Conservative values in a pledge that if he were in power, the "gloves would come off" on crime.
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