Michael Howard will use his keynote address to the Conservative conference today to promise to sack any minister who fails to meet the pledges made by an incoming Tory government.

Coming unusually on a Tuesday, rather than at the end of the week, the leader's speech will demand a new era of accountability in which Conservative ministers would have a timetable for action and no "wiggle room".

He will say: "I'll choose my Cabinet because I expect them to deliver. And if they don't I'll replace them with people who will.

"In the real world if you say you're going to do something you do it. And if you screw up you can lose your job. It's called accountability."

The scale of the task facing Howard was underlined last night by an ICM poll for Newsnight, which found that only 12 per cent of the public believe he will become prime minister.

Meanwhile, a senior aide to Iain Duncan Smith, claims today that Howard has actually lost support over the last 12 months.

Paul Baverstock, the former Tory director of strategic communications, says in an article in the Times that following the departure of Duncan Smith "it all seems to have gone terribly wrong".

He adds that "this summer's barrage of seemingly unrelated tactical initiatives targeted at the political junkies of the Westminster village and delivered in wonkish language simply won't get the job done".