NON-Conservatives should help pick Tory candidates in US-style primaries to end the party's demise in the North-East, Liam Fox said yesterday.

The right-wing candidate for the Tory leadership said opening up the selection process to non-members was the key to winning back seats in Labour's heartlands.

But, in an interview with The Northern Echo, he denied the Conservatives' failure in the region - winning only one of 30 seats - was due to an image problem.

Instead, Dr Fox said: "It's not a matter of aping Blair, changing our language or bowing to political correctness. It's about having an agenda that matters."

Key to turning around Tory fortunes, he said, was ensuring candidates in places such as the North-East represented those areas and were not imposed from outside.

Some US states allow voters, who are not registered Republicans or Democrats, to take part in the primary elections that choose the presidential candidates.

Dr Fox said: "There are areas of the country where we are not represented, and that's bad for the quality of our politics.

"If people get more involved in selecting our candidate, if we open the system out, they will feel they have greater ownership of it.

"The local Tory association could determine the last three or five candidates, then voters in the locality could register if they want to take part in choosing the successful candidate."

Dr Fox denied an open primary would end in the selection being hijacked by a special-interest group, such as religious extremists, insisting "they would cancel each other out".

The Shadow Foreign Secretary is the only one of the five known candidates not to have declared he is fighting from the centre ground of British politics.

However, he has insisted traditional right-left labels are outdated, pointing to his commitments to tackling poor care for the mentally ill and low educational achievement in the inner-cities.

Dr Fox has not set out a detailed policy programme, but is expected to retain the controversial tax breaks for private health care and vouchers to attend independent schools.

Yesterday, he underlined his Eurosceptic credentials by saying Britain should consider withdrawing from the European Union, rather than accept a single currency or a common security policy.