Government "policy failure" has contributed to the country's economic woes and led to a "catastrophic loss of trust" in Gordon Brown, a shadow Treasury minister has said.
In an interview with ePolitix.com Philip Hammond attacked Brown's economic record after figures showed rising inflation and unemployment.
Asked if the indicators signalled a government in "terminal decline", the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury said: "I don't think we should ever take that for granted because events come along but there has been a catastrophic loss of trust in Gordon Brown's government.
"I think he will find it very difficult to rebuild that trust but we are under no illusion that the public becoming disillusioned with the government doesn't automatically mean that they will embrace the Opposition, we have to work to gain their trust and that is what we are doing now."
On the specific question of what a Conservative government would do to tackle rising inflation, Hammond said: "We have proposed measures on fuel duty, on vehicle excise duty changes, on stamp duty for first time buyers, and ideas on reforming corporate insolvency law to make it easier for businesses to stay afloat when they are hit by the credit crunch to preserve jobs.
"Gordon Brown has for a long time boasted that one of Britain's great strengths was low inflation but we now see British inflation significantly higher than eurozone inflation.
"One of the reasons for that is clearly down to a government policy failure.
"Because the markets are no longer satisfied with the state of our economy and in particular the state of the public finances sterling is taking a hammering on the currency markets and as sterling slides the cost of everything increase disproportionately and so we are taking a double hit from the international rise in energy prices and the weakness of sterling."
The shadow cabinet member also lambasted ministers for the apparent lack of clarity surrounding proposals for stamp duty.
"It is just another sign of the chaos and confusion that is gripping the government when they used to be quite good at managing the news agenda.
"The issue of stamp duty was spun quite shamelessly to cover the bad news story of Northern Rock and the taxpayer having to write off £3bn of investment into the bank.
"They have managed to turn a good news story into an absolute disaster whereby a deliberate government leak on this stamp duty holiday story has actually frozen the market and made things much worse," Hammond said.
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