Britain's opposition Conservatives chose David Cameron, the party's youthful education spokesman, as their new leader yesterday to try to revive their fortunes and challenge Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The center-right party, which dominated 20th century British politics under leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill, is struggling to drag itself out of the wilderness after losing three successive elections to Blair.

Favorite Cameron, endorsed by the party's roughly 260,000 members, became the fifth Conservative leader in eight years but there is new hope in the party as Labor's popularity is waning and Blair has said he will not fight a fourth election.

Labor's parliamentary majority was more than halved at a May poll, attributed largely to anger over the Iraq War, and the Conservatives are now focusing their fire on his likely successor, Finance Minister Gordon Brown. Brown boasts a sound record in managing the world's fourth biggest economy since 1997. But his stewardship is starting to lose some of its shine he was forced on Monday to cut his economic growth forecasts.

Cameron, 39, competed for the leadership with David Davis, 56, the party's experienced home affairs spokesman. The winner will have about four years before the next election, due in 2010 at the latest, to make inroads into Labor's lead.

'Same old Conservatives'

Supporters believe Cameron, who has cast himself as a modernizer, can widen the party's appeal to voters in the center ground in the way Blair revamped his Labor party in the 1990s. They think Brown will be vulnerable because he will pursue more traditional left-wing policies.

But the finance minister said yesterday he had no intention of abandoning Blair's centrist policies, including public service reforms which state employees find painful.

Brown said Cameron who is 15 years younger represented the "same old Conservative party."

"What we have got here is simply a rebranding of an old policy with a new gloss on it ... which is cuts in public spending," he said.

Cameron is vague on policy detail but has said he would share the proceeds of economic growth between public service spending and tax cuts. Derided by some as too posh, he has emphasized the caring side of Conservatism and has pledged to support Labor on policies with which he agrees while his eurosceptic views have won him popularity in his party.

(China Daily December 7, 2005)