Mr William Hague put the fight back in Tory hearts last night with a powerful defence of Conservative values and "an independent Britain", coupled with an assault on "the Great Labour Lie" and an astonishingly personal attack on Tony Blair as "a fraud".
Sensing his party finally liberated from its general election defeat by Mr Blair's Bournemouth attack on "the forces of conservatism", Mr Hague in turn denounced the New Labour government as "the most twofaced, interfering, over-regulating, bossy, intolerant, arrogant and crony-run in our history".
Before aligning himself with the forces of conservatism from Churchill to Thatcher, and confirming his determination to save the pound at the next election, Mr Hague heaped ridicule on Mr Blair, whom he described as "embarrassed about where he came from, the country he lives in, the century he was born in, and the party he leads".
Before the election, he said, Mr Blair claimed to admire Tory success, implied he wanted to be like Mrs Thatcher, and pledged to be against higher taxes, think the unthinkable on welfare reform, and fight for Britain's interest in Europe. "This was their great deception," said Mr Hague: "This was the Great Labour Lie." Recalling Mr Blair's professed "love for the pound", he said: "If he was Pinocchio, he'd have a bigger nose than Concorde."
To the London Evening Standard he was the city slicker, "to Country Life he's the rural boy at heart," said Mr Hague. And his own favourite: "According to Labour's magazine, `Tony's favourite food is fish and chips. He gets a takeaway from his local chippie whenever he is at home in his constituency'. But when the Islington Cook Book asked the same question, he said his favourite food was `fresh fettucini garnished with an exotic sauce of olive oil, sun-dried tomatoes and capers'."
To Mr Blair's claim that "the establishment" was holding Britain back, Mr Hague declared: "He's a 40-something, publicschool-educated barrister from Islington, with a 200-seat majority in the House of Commons. Who does he think is the establishment? The man is a fraud."
Pronouncing himself proud of "the forces of conservatism", from saving Europe from tyranny to victory in the Cold War to the triumphs of Thatcherism "when Tony Blair was voting against every trade union law and campaigning for unilateral nuclear disarmament", he said Mr Blair's Bournemouth speech revealed he was above all "embarrassed by the opinions of the people who elected him".
Pledged to defeat "the miserable defeatist creed" which held the single European state inevitable, Mr Hague declared: "It must make sense not to turn our back on the continent but to exploit the opportunities of Britain's membership of the European Union.
"It must also make sense, not to drive for ever closer political union, but to create a flexible and open European Union of nationstates. When we're in government the next new EU treaty will contain a flexibility clause or else, I tell you, there will be no treaty."
Before the strains of Land of Hope and Glory carried them from Blackpool, Mr Hague told the faithful: "If you believe in Britain as a country that will work with its neighbours but never submit to being governed by anyone else; if you believe in an independent Britain: come with me, and I will give you back your country."