Tories meet as economy sours

By Tim Castle

LONDON (Reuters) - The Conservative Party meets this weekend hoping to consolidate its popularity and reassure voters of its economic competence after a stumbling response to the credit crunch.

Opinion polls put the centre-right party on course to crush Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government at the next general election. But the Conservatives will not want to look complacent at their annual conference starting on Sunday.

"It mustn't be triumphant," Conservative MP David Willetts told Reuters before the meeting in Birmingham. "There's a lot to do, nothing is taken for granted."

The implosion in financial markets has put the certainty of victory at risk as voters now focus on the Conservatives' economic credibility under leader David Cameron after more than a decade in opposition.

Brown made headlines at the Labour Party annual conference last week by declaring the economic crisis was "no time for a novice" -- a pointed dig at Cameron and his treasury spokesman George Osborne as well as rivals within his own party.

Cameron, 41 and in charge for three years, is credited with making the Conservative Party electable again after it lost three successive elections to Tony Blair's Labour.

He has shed the Conservatives' reputation as the "nasty" party, won control of London's administration and inflicted humiliating defeats on Labour in mid-term contests for vacant parliamentary seats.

But Cameron and Osborne remain vulnerable to the charge they lack the experience needed to cope with the most severe banking crisis since the 1930s depression.