British Conservatives gather to mete out plans to win next election

BIRMINGHAM, Britain, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of people gathered in Britain's second largest city Sunday for the annual Conservatives Party Conference, with party chairperson unveiling plans to win the next general election.

Opening the four-day conference, party chairperson Caroline Spelman said: "It's been a great year for the Conservative Party." She was referring to Tory's record of securing 40 percent of voters' support in polls for months on end, almost a 20-percentage-point lead over the ruling Labor Party.

A latest poll for the Sunday Telegraph has put the Conservatives at 43 percent, a 12-percentage-point lead over the Labor.

The five steps prescribed by Spelman to win the next election are no complacency, taking the center ground, unity, a clear plan to change the country, and a mission to fix the broken society and economy.

"We must never be complacent and never kid ourselves that 'it's in the bag,'" she warned, adding that the party should reflect the hopes and fears and anxieties of British people.

The Conservative Party is "the strong, positive alternative to Labor" and will stay that way, she said.

The general public has been dissatisfied with the government after 11 years under the reign of Labor. Some 15 months into his current post of prime minister, Gordon Brown is increasingly distant from voters' expectations, not only due to mistakes made in the 10-percent tax policy, but also something to do with his personality.

Nonetheless, the current economic turmoil has brought the public much closer behind him, given his marvelous record as chancellor of the Exchequer in the last decade or more in dealing with economic issues, despite calls for him to stand down from quarters within his own party.

He had pledged to take the country through the current economic difficulty with his experiences.

But the tide is already changing. With some 15,000 people registered for the party conference, the number of interest from the exhibitors are already exceeding that at the Labor Party Conference. Tory members are preparing to take over the government in the next election possibly in 2010.

"We are the force to change," said Edmond Yeo, a Conservative councilor from Ealing, London. And he is not the only one to have the upbeat feeling at the Birmingham conference.