MICHAEL Howard strode confidently on to stage to make his keynote speech at the Conservative conference in Bournemouth, to a recording of Nimrod by the great British composer Edward Elgar.

The tune was intended to capture a certain mood at the conference: grand, important, yet traditional; the sound of a party marching forward purposefully towards power.

So it is surprising to learn that Howard was persuaded to use the composition at the last minute.

The Tory leader, apparently, preferred the idea of walking on to a song which, he believed, encapsulated his message to the party: Elvis Presley's A Little Less Conversation (A Little More Action).

In fact, the Tories need a lot more action to stand any chance of marching into Downing Street at the next election - a fact acknowledged by Howard at an interview with the Evening Press.

He effectively wrote off the party's chances of winning in York - indeed, in urban areas across the North of England - when he admitted: "It would be nice to get results in cities such as York - but we can win the election without winning there."

Mr Howard also refused to deny, despite being pressed repeatedly, that the Liberal Democrats were now the main challenger to Labour in the city. City of York, with its MP Labour's Hugh Bayley, is number 231 on the Lib Dem's pre-election hit list. It is the Tory's 253rd target.

This is despite the Conservatives' coming second at the 2001 General Election. They polled 11,293 votes - nearly 14,000 behind Mr Bayley, who polled 25,072 votes, but only 2,500 ahead of the Lib Dems, who received 8,519 votes.

Mr Howard said he would "love to win seats" in Newcastle and Liverpool, Leeds and York, but insisted "we can win the General Election without doing that".

His remarks flew in the face of his insistence, on succeeding Iain Duncan Smith last year, that there were no "no go" areas for his party.

Mr Howard marched into Labour's inner-city heartlands, stating: "The Labour Party feel they own the votes of working class communities. They do not."

But he admitted Conservative support had all but been wiped out in York, along with Manchester, Sheffield, Durham and Rochdale.

As well as electing a Labour MP, the residents of York voted in a Liberal Democrat council.

The Tories have also suffered a string of humiliating by-election defeats in urban areas, including a catastrophic fourth-place finish in Hartlepool last week - the first time one of the main political parties has finished outside the top three in a by-election since before the Second World War.

Defeat came hot on the heels of disasters in by-elections in Leicester South and Birmingham Hodge Hill, when the party trailed in third.

Mr Howard insists the party must get its message across - the "ten words" flagged up at conference as being the keys to government: lower taxes; school discipline; more police; cleaner hospitals; and controlled immigration.

But his predicament is not helped by the fact that the Conservatives simply do not have an army of activists wooing voters in cities such as York. There is little support for the Tories. Hence, there are fewer people to canvas potential voters on the doorstep.

Mr Howard is not overly concerned. "There are now a multiplicity of means of communication with people. It's not the only way," he says.

But unless he manages to get supporters into the streets and on to the doorsteps, using a little conversation to convince floating voters to back him, the Tory leader will not get the chance to take any action.

Updated: 09:07 Friday, October 08, 2004