BBC NEWS | UK | Politics | Duncan Smith attacks Major years

Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith has attacked the prime ministerial record of John Major in an attempt to distance the party from the past.

Mr Duncan Smith launched his scathing attack as his own leadership came under fire from senior Tories.

The opposition leader told the Sunday Telegraph that he would use next week's party conference to silence the "drumbeats from the past".

I am not trapped in 'back to basics' - I never uttered the words

Iain Duncan Smith

Polls published on Sunday show voters think the Conservatives are only as effective in opposition as the Liberal Democrats, or according to one for the ITV1 Jonathan Dimbleby programme, even less so.

In his interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Duncan Smith said his party was "twitchy" going into the conference.

It comes at the end of a difficult week for the Tories which started with former minister Edwina Currie's revelations of an affair with Mr Major during the 1980s.

Mr Duncan Smith told the newspaper the party had to face up to the failures of that period to be able to recover.

He went on to list the failures of the Major government which would later cost the Tories the 1997 election:

Spending "went through the roof"

Broken pledges on taxes meant they started to rise

Businesses "went to the wall" and negative equity in houses.

Failure to embrace public service reform.

"The public felt hurt," Mr Duncan Smith told the paper.

"Then we lectured them and seemed arrogant," he added.

On the failure to reform public services, he said: "I am going to own up and say quite categorically: 'We didn't do it, and by not doing it, we hurt you'.

"We fell from power because of that."

On Mr Major's much-used 'back to basics' phrase, Mr Duncan Smith said: "I am not trapped in 'back to basics'. I never uttered the words."

Earlier this week, former leadership rival Kenneth Clarke accused Mr Duncan Smith of failing to develop a clear policy agenda, and said his stance on Iraq risked making the Tories seem "America's poodle".

While one-time Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind said the leader had damaged his party's credibility with his "unquestioning" support for Blair over Iraq, and ex-minister and London mayoral candidate Steve Norris said his agenda for modernising the party was "intellectually incoherent".

Poll results

An ICM poll for the News of the World newspaper gave both the Tories and Liberal Democrats the same level of electoral support with 24% of the vote, while Labour is out ahead on 43%.

Meanwhile the YouGov poll for the Dimbleby programme, rated the Tories a less effective Opposition than the Lib Dems.

Half of voters are either quite or very dissatisfied with Mr Duncan Smith's performance as leader of the Opposition, according to the survey.

The Tory chairman Theresa May has said one of the main problems facing the party is that of too few women and an ageing membership.

And she told BBC News Online the party needed to regain its campaigning edge.