By Adrian Croft
British opposition leader David Cameron, widely expected to be prime minister after an election next year, will face pressure to flesh out his plans to cut a soaring budget deficit and consolidate economic recovery.
Cameron's centre-right Conservatives will be subjected to a new level of scrutiny in Manchester next week at the party's last annual conference before a parliamentary election due by next June that they are strong favourites to win.
Cameron, 42, who has never held a ministerial post, will have to do more than drive home his attacks on a Labour government he sees as having squandered money and wasted opportunities during 12 years in power.
When he closes the four-day conference on Thursday, the Oxford-educated leader will have to show he has the gravitas to lead a country just starting to recover from the worst recession in decades.
"Because they are a government-in-waiting, it's not sufficient just to say Labour has made a mess. What you have to say is how we are going to get out of this mess with the Conservatives," said Wyn Grant, politics professor at Warwick University.
With the Conservatives consistently ahead of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour Party in the polls, Cameron knows he must avoid the pitfall of looking triumphal. Britain's top-selling daily, the Sun, endorsed the Conservatives this week, overshadowing Brown's own conference speech.
"We've still got a huge amount of work to do. There isn't one ounce of complacency in the Conservative Party," Cameron, a former public relations man, told a radio interviewer this week.
SPENDING CUTS
Labour's popularity has slumped as a decade-long boom turned to the worst bust since World War Two. A scandal over extravagant expenses tarnished both main parties.
Brown, who replaced Tony Blair in 2007, has failed to enthuse voters. The media portray Labour as a spent force and are looking to the Conservatives to bring change.
The future of public services and government spending are set to dominate both the conference and the election campaign.
The Conservatives say spending cuts are vital to rein in record public borrowing forecast to reach 175 billion pounds ($279 billion) this year. Labour has belatedly admitted the need for cuts but says Conservative cuts will be much more drastic and risk stifling any economic recovery.
Both parties have given few details of where they will cut spending or raise taxes, to avoid alienating voters.
Britain's leading employers' group, the CBI, said this week that whichever party wins the election should set out a clear and credible plan to balance the budget by 2015.
Cameron will also have to prevent the conference being torn apart by a row over Europe. Ireland holds a referendum on the European Union's Lisbon reform treaty on Friday.
The Eurosceptic Cameron has pledged to hold a referendum on the treaty if he wins power and it has not been ratified by all EU members by then. However, some Conservative right-wingers want a referendum even if all EU states have ratified it.
Cameron's posh background and upper-class voice mark a sharp contrast with Brown, 58, who stresses his modest origins as the son of a Church of Scotland minister.
Cameron, who can trace his lineage back to 19th century monarch King William IV, had the classic upbringing of the British upper classes. He was educated at top private school Eton before going to Oxford where he joined the elitist and rowdy Bullingdon dining club.
Leader since 2005, Cameron has moved the party to the centre, diluting its free-market, small-government philosophy and recasting it as compassionate and environmentally-friendly.
