I was elected by 68 per cent of our members on an unambiguous manifesto for change.  During the campaign, at hustings up and down the country, I made clear that on a wide range of issues: tax cuts, grammar schools, subsidising private healthcare, women candidates, the environment, tackling poverty at home and abroad, I would lead this party in a new direction.

That's exactly what I've been doing these last few weeks.  I don't think we have time to hang around: it took the Labour Party fourteen years to come to terms with Conservative electoral success and make itself electable again.  We have three years - four at most.  Our country urgently needs a Conservative Government to tackle the challenges we face and to prepare Britain for success in the twenty first century.  I want us to win the next election, not come a decent second.

But I know that change raises questions.  What are you trying to do?  Is it Conservative?  How does it serve the national interest?  I'd like to take this opportunity to answer these questions directly.

What I'm trying to do is straightforward.  I want to put the Conservative Party back in the mainstream of political debate.  Only if we do that will we show ourselves relevant to the concerns and aspirations of modern Britain.  This is what the Conservative Party has always done: the secret of our enduring success as a political party has been our ability to keep up to date with social progress and the changing aspirations that social progress brings.

Disraeli recognised the need to make the Conservative Party relevant to the emerging middle class in our towns and cities.  Churchill recognised the need to offer the post-war generation the dream of a property-owning democracy.  Lady Thatcher saw the need to make Conservatism the aspirational choice for working class voters trapped by the patronising assumptions of socialism.

So today we need to show how our values and principles are the best way to meet the aspirations of a new generation who demand social justice for all as well as high standards of living for themselves; who care about their quality of life as well as the quantity of money in their pockets.  I'm fired by a determination to improve the environment we leave to our children.  But I believe that we'll only do that if we harness the ingenuity of the market for green ends.  Our mission should be to end poverty both at home and abroad - but we will only achieve that goal through Conservative principles of encouraging enterprise, helping people to independence, and giving them the tools to climb the ladder from poverty to wealth.

No-one should be in any doubt about the scale of the change needed.  We have a massive electoral mountain to climb.  We need to win around 120 seats to have any majority at the next election.  We've got to move on from the comfort zone Conservatism of the last two elections that failed to move us beyond 33 per cent of the vote.  As we look at our last three election results, the question is not whether the changes of the last few weeks have been enough - but how much more we need.

The next question is perhaps the one I hear most often. Is what we're doing Conservative? Aren't we just turning the party into a pale imitation of New Labour? I am Conservative to the core of my being, as those who know me best will testify.

I'm a Conservative because my instinctive values, and my responses to every political challenge, are Conservative values and Conservative responses.

First, I believe that the more you trust people, the stronger they and society become.  So, for example, my response to the urgent need to restore respect in society is the opposite of Tony Blair's top-down government initiatives.  I want to set free the voluntary organisations and social enterprises who have the knowledge and the commitment to turn our communities around.

Second, I believe passionately that we're all in this together - that we have a shared responsibility for our shared future.  There isn't a single challenge we face that isn't best addressed by asking not just what government can do, but what individuals, families, business and the voluntary sector can do.

So in education, for example, while we want to give headteachers more freedom to run their schools, and while we ask all parents to take responsibility for their children's education, we also believe that government should show leadership in the areas where it can make a decisive difference: synthetic phonics to teach literacy properly; setting by ability to stretch the brightest pupils.

The task for our Party today is to apply these core Conservative values to the challenges of our time, and this brings me to the third, and most important question Conservatives are asking: how will a modern, compassionate Conservative Party serve the national interest?  I think the answer lies in a different question.

In years to come, Conservatives of my generation will be asked what they did to stop a Labour Government that's progressively undermining the wealth-creating dynamism of our economy; whose top-down bureaucracies stand in the way of social justice; a Government that talks about Britishness while carving up our country into regions that no-one wants and which no-one voted for, and which persists with an ID cards scheme that offends all our national instincts; a Government that's incapable of taking the long-term decisions that will improve our quality of life.

I don't want to say that I complained about these things to my Conservative friends and merely went through the motions of making speeches and writing articles. I want to say that I got out there, fought for my beliefs, made new Conservative friends, and got my Party elected to Government so we could put right what Labour's got wrong.  So we could write the next chapter of the proudest story in British politics: how the Conservative Party made life better for the people of Britain.

I hope you found this update useful and I look forward to working with you in the run-up to the crucial local elections on 4th May and beyond to build a Party that's a voice for change, optimism and hope.

Yours sincerely,
 
David Cameron
Leader of the Conservative Party