Ancram plea for Tory Party 'soul'

In a 30-page document setting out what amounts to an alternative agenda for the party, Michael Ancram will warn the leadership to stop "trashing" its Thatcherite past and denounce the strategy of presenting Mr Cameron as the "heir to Blair".

While he applauds some of his leader's policies and the proposals emerging from Tory policy review groups, Mr Ancram's comments are likely to be seen as an attack on Mr Cameron's drive to move the Conservatives into the political centre ground.

Mr Ancram's comments come on the day a proposal to give council tenants state aid worth 10% of the value of their home to help them buy a property will be unveiled by a Conservative policy group.

The scheme is designed to break up "ghetto" estates by encouraging social housing tenants to get a foot on the first rung of the private property ladder. If they left the social rented sector, they would receive the share as a cash payment towards the price of their first property, in what would amount to a major extension of the Thatcher government's right-to-buy scheme.

The scheme is the highlight of a package of measures on social housing in a report to be published by the Tories' Public Services Improvement Policy Group, co-chaired by former health secretary Stephen Dorrell and Baroness Perry, which will also include proposals on education and health.

The group's proposals are not binding on Mr Cameron, but will clearly be considered as he draws up his manifesto for the next general election.

Mr Ancram's comments will be all the more potent because of Mr Ancram's ultra-loyal record in three decades as an MP, meaning they threaten to provide a rallying point for Tory traditionalists unsettled by Mr Cameron's approach.

In extracts from the document published in the Daily Telegraph, Mr Ancram called on Mr Cameron to show voters that the Tories had not lost the values and principles which made up their "timeless" soul. While praising some of the proposals of the policy groups, he added: "However good they are they will not of themselves alter the current public perception of the Conservative Party as lacking an overall sense of vision and direction and a clear projection of what it stands for.

"It is vital that these proposals are presented within a framework of the principles and beliefs which in every generation, however differently articulated, have formed the solid and unalterable foundations of Conservatism which have historically been the key to our electoral success."