WILLIAM Hague yesterday branded Tony Blair the "new Harold Wilson" - a Prime Minister destined to be remembered as little more than a good election winner.

The former Tory leader delighted a 400-strong audience at a Bournemouth fringe meeting by comparing Mr Blair to his failed predecessor from the 1960s and 1970s.

Mr Hague said the Prime Minister had tried to airbrush Mr Wilson out of Labour history by harking back instead to the achievements of the post-war Attlee administration.

But, in a lecture for Conservative Way Forward, he argued that Mr Blair had more in common with the Yorkshire-born Wilson, who also failed to change the face of politics.

Mr Hague said: "As with Wilson's legacy, Blair's legacy will be of command and control, great expectations, even greater broken promises, policy failure and of general disillusionment."

The Richmond MP outlined a series of close similarities between Mr Wilson and Mr Blair, who were both young when they became prime minister after the sudden death of a Labour leader. Both came to power after a long period of Tory rule and, where Mr Blair had Cool Britannia, Mr Wilson had cuddled up to The Beatles and the 1966 World Cup winning team.

Most notably, where Mr Wilson had tried to plan economic growth from Whitehall, Mr Blair was trying to centralise control over public services - with a similar lack of success.

The meeting showed that Mr Hague - along with Tory MP Boris Johnson - is the biggest draw on the conference fringe at Bourne-mouth, three years after he resigned as party leader.