'We're ready to win election' - Saatchi

Michael Howard's chief lieutenant let slip his contempt for the previous Tory regime yesterday as he revealed that Iain Duncan Smith had effectively written off all hope of winning the next election.

Lord Saatchi, one of the two chairmen of the party appointed by Mr Howard, told a fringe meeting of the party's spring conference in Harrogate that he had asked for a list of target seats on the first day in his new job last November.

To his astonishment, aides produced a list of just 94 constituencies, 50 short of the total the Conservatives would need to win a majority. "When I asked about the others I was told that we didn't think we could win them," the Conservative chairman revealed to the audience of party activists.

He said that Mr Howard "had absolutely no interest in reducing Labour's majority". "The aim is to win," he said.

Poll figures on economic competence and taxation, the two most crucial indicators, showed the Conservatives ahead on both for the first time since they last won an election, he said.

"It is now possible not only to see how we will win the next election but it is hard to see how we will lose," the peer told delegates, who have flocked to Harrogate in record numbers for Mr Howard's first conference as leader.

The Conservatives will move into new headquarters in time to fight the local and European elections in June, the Tory leader will tell activists today.

The party has put up its Smith Square headquarters for sale but will see little of the expected £10m it will fetch - the building has been heavily mortgaged.

Nevertheless, the move to three floors of an office block on nearby Victoria Street will be taken by Labour as clear evidence of the growing professionalism of the opposition.

Senior aides said the new headquarters, spread over 20,000sq ft, would include a host of new election-fighting facilities.

In contrast to Smith Square, seen by activists as a plotter's haven, the new headquarters would be a modern-day Bletchley Park, Lord Saatchi said.

Its motto would be "why use one word when none will do?", the chairman said.