- guardian.co.uk, Sunday March 4 2001 05.20 GMT
- The Observer, Sunday March 4 2001
In a determined attempt to play the nationalist card, the Tory leader will argue that he is proud to champion the man in the street's gut instincts.
He will tell delegates at the Conservatives' conference in Harrogate to imagine what the country would be like if Labour wins a second term, adding: 'Let me take you on a journey to a foreign land - to Britain after a second term of Tony Blair. The Royal Mint melting down pound coins as the euro notes start to circulate.
'Our currency and our ability to set our own interest rates gone forever. The Chancellor returning from Brussels carrying instructions to raise taxes still further.'
Aides said his speech, focusing on Europe, tax, immigration and law and disorder, will be aimed at disgruntled swing voters who feel unwanted and disapproved of in a liberal Blairite Britain.
Hague is threatening an aggressive and hard-fought election campaign. 'It will be a bumpy ride,' said one. He is conveying the message of Britain becoming a country where its people feel uncomfortable, where its people feel alienated - a great example is political correctness.
'People feel nervous and ill at ease in their own country because the way that they express themselves, their instinctive attitudes and beliefs, the way they communicate with each other, are suddenly circumscribed by unfamiliar rules.'
The Tories insisted there were no racist undertones to the speech, and that Hague was not drawing an explicit parallel between the influx of immigrants and the sense that ordinary Britons were no longer welcome in their own country.
Hague has already been accused of a dangerous flirtation with populism over immigration or law and order issues. However, he will say tomorrow that the Tories are in line with what the majority of people want, including a system that rewards 'people who are trying to do the right thing' such as pensioners and married couples with children.
Aides say they are targeting not hardline core voters but the 10 million voters their private polling identifies as not yet having made up their minds on how to vote.
Meanwhile, Michael Portillo fired the first shot in the Budget battle in a speech that twice harked back to his time serving under Margaret Thatcher, a deliberate pitch to right-wing activists. He accused the Chancellor of 'stealth' tax rises which would undo any headline-grabbing tax cuts announced next week.
The Shadow Chancellor came under attack from the Government and the unions over his commitment to lower the inflation target to 2 per cent. Ken Jackson, leader of the AEEU union, warned that lower inflation targets would mean higher interest rates.
'The Tories tried monetarism in the 1980s and it cost us a third of manufacturing,' Jackson said. 'Portillo wants to do it all over again and that would cost us 250,000 manufacturing jobs.'
