Today's papers respond to Michael Howard's keynote speech to the Conservative conference.

Times

"The address reinforced the impression that Mr Howard is a serious man. In a presidential system he would be a powerful candidate because, although not as empathic as Tony Blair, he commands respect. In Britain, however, the person cannot be totally divorced from the party. Mr Howard’s undoubted credibility is important, but it is not enough alone."

Guardian

"The most striking and most carefully constructed part was on Europe. Here the pledges suddenly got more specific - a referendum on the EU constitution by September 2005, withdrawal from the social chapter, from the common fisheries policy and from EU overseas aid programmes. The delegates responded fervently - a sign of the Tory party's undiminished grassroots Europhobia."

Independent

"No amount of neat phrasing could make this into a speech of a prime minister in waiting. It was a speech of a leader whose party is on the back foot, even in opposition; a leader confined to small ideas, because the party in its current, fragile, state cannot unite around any greater vision."

Telegraph

"Elgar's Nimrod was the perfect anthem to accompany Michael Howard's speech to the Conservative conference in Bournemouth yesterday. As its familiar melody rose to a crescendo in the hall, the party's spirits were lifted, too ... He displayed the steady, often unglamorous virtues any future prime minister should possess. He offered a prospect of leadership that has little to do with the flashy platitudes of Tony Blair, nor with the opportunism he himself has been accused of."

Sun

"It is a skilled politician who can sum up in 10 words why you should vote for his party. Michael Howard did just that. School discipline. More police. Cleaner hospitals. Lower taxes. Controlled immigration. It was as if he had opened a mailbag from Sun readers. Add in pensions and Europe and he not only addressed Tony Blair’s seven sins, but turned them into seven potential Tory wins. Only potential, mind you. For good as Howard’s speech was, the polls are against him and his party being elected."

Mirror

"He said he wanted to win back voters' trust but Michael Howard's speech was full of untrustworthy, deceitful, hypocritical promises. Yet nothing was more dishonest than the pious, tear-jerking performance he finished with. Coming to the front of the platform - a move obviously advised by his spin doctors - he told how his family fled to this country before the Second World War to escape the Nazis. His grandmother had died in a concentration camp, he said, and he owed his life to the sanctuary he was given here. Yet Michael Howard wants to deny that same security to today's asylum seekers, many of whom are fleeing regimes as brutal as Nazi Germany."

Express

"Mr Howard's biggest problem is, perhaps, himself. He has to show us that he is not only an articulate lawyer but also a leader. He needs to unite the party and make us warm to the Tories again. That is a tough order. Most of us stopped liking the party when it ejected Margaret Thatcher so brutally."

Mail

"This was a Tory leader prepared refreshingly and unequivocally to advocate the moral case for Conservatism: low taxes... smaller government... families spending their own money more wisely than any politician or bureaucrat ever could... and the self-reliance that is the ultimate bulwark against the 'rights' culture that is so damaging to modern civic society."