Tory chief slams 'spin and squander'

Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith has declared that Tony Blair's Government has failed the country and its people with an administration of "spin and squander".

Speaking at Millbank Tower, Labour's former media HQ in central London, he promised to deliver a Conservative administration based on "competence and conviction".

Mr Duncan Smith said: "Here at Millbank we've come to tell Labour - old and new - that both their ways have failed and to say to the people of Britain there should be no third chance for Tony Blair's Third Way."

The Conservative leader, in an end of term address to party workers and colleagues before the Commons breaks for the summer, said New Labour had been "born in this building".

The tower on the banks of the Thames had once been the party HQ and the base for former Cabinet Minister Peter Mandelson's campaigning and electioneering unit.

Attacking the Prime Minister and Chancellor, the Tory leader said: "Mr Blair and Mr Brown have been the Arthur Daleys of British politics - the dodgiest of used-car salesmen - trying to flog a clapped-out, broken-down model for change, by slapping on a new coat of paint.

"They tried to con the great middle ground of British politics into believing that their policies were Conservative and that you could have a Conservative Government without the Conservative Party. But all they delivered is classic Labour."

Labour had "centralised control and robbed local government of real autonomy", he said. It had frustrated public services with a bewildering array of targets and engineered a public sector job creation programme. He also claimed Labour was losing 2,000 manufacturing jobs a week.

"All this they've done because the politics of Old Labour still rushes through their veins - with the Chancellor Gordon Brown at the party's beating heart."

The Tory leader charged: "After six years of lies and deceit, the Prime Minister's moral and political authority has been irretrievably damaged. Years of spin and squander have fostered the idea that politics can't make a difference and that politicians don't care. If Mr Blair has any legacy at all, this is his legacy: from overwhelming optimism to utter disillusionment in just six years."

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