William Hague called David Cameron “the best of us” as he rallied Conservative activists to their leader in the opening address of the party’s conference in Blackpool.

He rebuked prominent critics of Mr Cameron’s leadership for “public self-indulgence” and warned activists to make the most of their current leader.

The party’s rank-and-file gave Mr Hague standing ovations at the start and end of his speech, but he sought to deflect their enthusiasm.

In Mr Cameron, the Shadow Foreign Secretary and former party leader said, “you find a man whose combination of tenacity and intelligence makes him the best of us” adding that he “would make a remarkable and brilliant Prime Minister”.

He mocked Gordon Brown’s photo-call with Baroness Thatcher on the steps of No 10 and, referring to analysis by The Times that showed the debt that Mr Brown’s conference speech owed to those of US politicians, Mr Hague said that he, too, would borrow from American political history.

“Some of us stood here 30 years ago with Margaret Thatcher. We, Gordon, backed her when she rescued our country in the face of every denunciation and insults from the likes of you.

“You may now fawn at the feet of our greatest Prime Minister – but you are no Margaret Thatcher,” he added, in an echo of the memorable putdown of Dan Quayle delivered by Lloyd Bentsen in the US vice-presiden-tial campaign in 1988.

Mr Brown, he said, was not a conviction politician. “He is a calculation politician. He calculates that people will forget who caused the current crises in our health service, our prisons and our pensions. He calculates that he can pretend to be a new government. But he is the old government and, after ten years of failure and disappointment, he cannot be the change the country needs.”

He attacked as arrogant and brazen Mr Brown’s refusal to hold a referendum on the amended European Union treaty. He demanded: “What is the point of citizens’ juries, if on the one issue on which all parties made a pledge to consult the nation, the Government is too weak in its arguments, too deceitful in its conduct and too cowardly in its politics to seek the verdict of the jury of the nation?”

He put the party’s activists on notice not to undermine this week’s conference with the prospect of a general election in a little over a month.

The public’s willingness to vote Tory would depend on their ability to show an ability to fight back, he said. “We have strong leadership, clear direction, and policies our country needs so let us make the most of all that.”

Mr Hague praised Mr Cameron for taking frank and sound advice from “those of us who have held high office”. Taking a swipe at Lord Tebbit, he added that such advice was best given in private, and “never through public self-indulgence”.

The conference would show that the Tories had the ideas, candidates, determination and leadership to form the next government, he said.

Labour had left a “trail of abandoned targets, broken promises, squandered budgets, false announcements and reannouncements that have left the word of government less believed than ever in the history of our country”. Council tax had nearly doubled in Mr Brown’s ten years as Chancellor, millions of pounds had been “removed” from pension funds and stamp duty had been “mercilessly increased”.

No politician who “does such violence to the lifetime savings of millions of hardworking people can be the right Prime Minister for our future”.

Pointing to a series of council by-elec-tion victories, Mr Hague declared: “The Conservative Party is ready, it is hungry for victory and if Gordon Brown ever summons up the courage to call an election we are going to beat him.” Mr Hague’s appearance had been delayed after representatives said that they could not hear an opening address by the head of the party’s voluntary wing. Deploying his gift for humour, he said: “Welcome to Blackpool, where the air is fresh and the sound is clear.

“The sound system unfortunately was designed for John Prescott. It was intended to make a completely jumbled-up speech sound clear but it can do the same in reverse and that is what has gone wrong this morning.”

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