Call for 'lame duck' Tory leader to go now

A prominent financial backer of the Conservative Party today called for Michael Howard to stand down immediately, in order to clear the way for the swift election of a new leader.

Former party treasurer and major donor Lord Kalms said Mr Howard had become a "lame duck leader" as a result of his announcement on Friday that he would quit as soon as new rules have been drawn up to select his successor.

His comments came as Mr Howard put the finishing touches to a reshuffle expected tomorrow, in which his key lieutenant Oliver Letwin is expected to stand down as Shadow Chancellor in order to take up a lucrative job in the City.

Mr Howard yesterday lost two members of his Shadow Cabinet, Tim Yeo and Nicholas Soames, as Tory MPs began jockeying for position ahead of the leadership contest.

And he has today come under criticism for his handling of the General Election campaign, with leading moderniser John Bercow denouncing his "repellent" focus on immigration and eurosceptic Bill Cash blasting his decision to avoid the issue of Europe.

A Conservative Party spokeswoman dismissed reports that Mr Letwin would be moved as "just speculation", adding: "People will have to wait for the Shadow Cabinet reshuffle to see if there are any such changes."

But sources within the party indicated that Mr Letwin wanted a move out of the Tory Treasury team in order to allow him to take up work in the financial sector. He quit a £300,000-a-year post as director of merchant bank NM Rothschild when appointed Shadow Chancellor in 2003.

He is expected to remain in the Shadow Cabinet in a different role which would be compatible with outside activities.

Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Lord Kalms, the Dixons president who was treasurer under Iain Duncan Smith, said "tomorrow would not be quick enough" for Mr Howard to go.

"There is nothing worse than a lame duck leader," he said. "Michael has done a terrific job and tried very hard, but once you are gone, you are gone and the quicker you go the better."Every day is now a wasted day."

Lord Kalms said it would be "a very unhappy experience" if the new leader wasnot in place in time for the Conservatives' annual conference in October.

"I want to see the new leadership battle as quickly as possible. We have got to hit the ground running immediately," he told Today.

He declined to name his preferred choice for leader, but said that Shadow Home Secretary David Davis would be "a very good candidate" if he stood.

Lord Kalms said he was "very concerned" about proposals to exclude the party membership from the ballot to choose a new leader, something which some figures on the right of the party fear is designed to block Mr Davis from seizing the top job.

The Dixons boss was critical of Mr Howard's focus on a "technocratic" agenda in the election, which he said saw the Tories offer proposals for dealing with problems like hospital infections and illegal immigration rather than a broad vision for Britain's future.

"We didn't really talk about hope and aspirations and wealth creation," he said. "We just covered the ground of subjects which caused people's eyes to glaze over.

"What is required, obviously, is to reassess what essentially Conservatism is about."

He called for a greater emphasis on tax reductions, opposition to the European constitution and business deregulation.

Leading moderniser John Bercow, who quit last year as Shadow International Development Secretary, described the Conservative election manifesto as "embarrassingly thin" and criticised Mr Howard's decision to call Tony Blair a liar.

"We have focused far too much on immigration, even though it is nowhere near top of voters' priorities. Repeatedly highlighting the issue seemed at best obsessive and at worst repellent," he said in an article published today in The Independent.

"Calling Tony Blair a liar was extraordinarily unwise. It made us look nasty and played straight into Charles Kennedy's hands. It beggars belief that anyone could think that vulgar personal abuse of Tony Blair would make people decide to vote Tory."

He warned that if the party was to win a return to power, it needed to change its selection procedures to ensure that more women and ethnic minority candidates were chosen.

"It will need decisive action from the top to make the party think, look and sound more like the country we want to govern," he said.

And eurosceptic Bill Cash criticised Mr Howard's decision not to focus on Europe during the campaign.

"We had a positive message of commerce, enterprise and the global economy, which we could have put across against the low-growth, high unemployment of the EU and all this massive regulation," Mr Cash told Today.

"All of this could have been emphasised, and the polls show that we got 33% of the vote and yet 54% of people say they wanted this to be an issue at the centre of the election."

Mr Cash said the Tories should not be scared off debating Europe by the fear of splits within the party."There has been a potentiality for splits in the party, which people have been concerned about," he said.

"But that should be overridden by the fundamental question of deciding what the Conservative Party is really about."