UK Conservatives seek fifth leader in eight years

Britain's once-mighty Conservative party, encouraged by last week's election results but still far from power, are arguing among themselves again as they seek their fifth leader in eight years.

They will doubtlessly find a standard-bearer eventually, but analysts believe the search for a party identity to appeal to the nation will be much harder.

The fight for direction within the once-mighty centre-right party of Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill raged yesterday as Mr Howard reshuffled his shadow Cabinet, the team of opposition spokesmen who will challenge government ministers.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, 52, was badly weakened by the election, which sharply reduced his Labour Party's big majority in Parliament. But he insists he will serve a full third term.

Conservative leader Michael Howard, 63, did slightly better than observers expected but then announced he will quit on the grounds he would be too old to fight the next election.

A leadership election is expected in the coming months.

Yesterday, he gave senior posts to the youthful George Osborne and David Cameron - considered two rising stars - signalling he may want the leadership to skip a generation.

But experienced hands also got jobs in the top team.

Despite having been out of power eight years, analysts say the Conservatives have yet to face up to the fact Labour has moved from the left to steal much of their traditional ground.

An argument about whether to shift to the right in search of "clear blue water" between the parties or fight for the middle ground where elections tend to be won is still not settled.

"Tony Blair has taken many of their positions - he has placed the Labour Party in the centre ground of British politics which is traditionally where the Conservative party fights from," said Mr Blair biographer Anthony Seldon.

In his election campaign, Mr Howard dwelled heavily on what he said was uncontrolled immigration - a rightward move that many moderates felt turned off the British public.

Leading figures Nicholas Soames - Mr Churchill's grandson - and Tim Yeo have already relinquished their shadow government positions to shape the debate about the party's way forward. That debate, very roughly, opposes two schools of thought.

The "one more heave" school says that with Mr Blair's parliamentary majority more than halved to 67, the Conservatives could regain power at the next election in four or five years without undertaking a major change in their approach.

The modernisers say that the majority is still big and that next time Labour will not be hampered by an unpopular leader - as Mr Blair is widely seen - and by strong opposition to his support for the US invasion of Iraq.

"We've... got to face the fact that we only got 33 per cent of the vote, so we need to broaden the appeal," Mr Osborne, Mr Howard's new finance spokesman, told the BBC.

Some tip Mr Osborne, now the shadow chancellor of the exchequer, as a potential candidate for leader but the favourite to succeed Mr Howard is David Davis, who remained as home affairs spokesman after yesterday's reshuffle.

A self-made man who breaks many Conservative moulds but is an unrepentant right-winger, Mr Davis looks to his opponents on the left like a man who will struggle to win over undecided voters.