Key excerpts from Michael Howard's speech launching his campaign to become Conservative leader.

"I am announcing today that I am a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party."

"I want to begin by paying tribute to Iain Duncan Smith, to his courage, to his dignity, to his decency and for what he has achieved in the past two years."

"This is a great party, the longest standing, most successful party in the history of democracy.

"There is no other party that has done so much or achieved so much as ours. We are its trustees.

"At its best, we have a party broad and generous, broad in appeal and generous in outlook, a party capable of representing all Britain and all Britons."

"I will lead this party from its centre... I will call on the talents of all in the party and the party will expect all to answer that call."

"There will be no narrow political opportunism from us. I will tell the truth. I will tell it as I see it."

"Today we know that there are pockets of desperate poverty in our cities, in our communities, left behind by decades of failure.

"No party that aspires to govern this great nation can ignore them.

"Many of our great provincial cities are Conservative deserts today. My mission is to change that.

"There can be no no-go areas for a modern Conservative Party."

"My parents weren't rich but I had the chance to go to a good grammar school."

"Our party must be internationalist in outlook.

"If we have concerns about the direction of the European Union, it is not because we are little Englanders or because we hark back to some bygone golden age.

"It is because we see it as too intrusive, too rigid for the fast growing networks for the era of globalisation."

"I wasn't born into the Conservative Party, I chose it."

"We are still only in the foothills of our ascent."

"In the contemporary Conservative Party that we support there is no place for ancient feuds."

"Today once more, we are seizing our destiny. Britain deserves better than it has today. It is our destiny to provide it.

"We must prove that we are equal to that challenge."