Tory leader David Cameron has warned his party that they must continue with his modernisation drive or face a fourth consecutive general election defeat.
He made clear that he will not bow to pressure from traditional Conservatives alarmed at the direction he is taking the party.
"I suppose you could spend the next few years as leader of the Conservative Party just telling people what they wanted to hear and jolly them along and everyone would be happy - and then you would lose another election. Well, I don't see the point of that," he said.
"What I say to traditional Conservatives is that we have lost three elections in a row. We have to modernise and change to reflect changes to British society."
Mr Cameron, who celebrates his first anniversary as leader on Wednesday, said that the party had been wrong at the last general election to focus on issues such as Europe, immigration and subsidising patients to be treated privately.
While he insisted that he is not deliberately seeking to antagonise the party's old guard with the new emphasis on climate change and ensuring greater representation for women and ethnic minorities, he also made clear that he will not change course.
"I don't go out to annoy anybody but I want to change the Conservative Party and get us back to the centre ground and in a position where we can win. If you have to annoy people along the way - that's tough," he said.
He denied that his decision to pull out of a speech to the Confederation of British Industry in order to visit British troops in Iraq had been a piece of deliberate political positioning to distance himself from big business.
"I was desperate to go, all the more desperate to go when they said we don't think you've said enough about business," he said.
Read More
But when the military offered him a date to go to Iraq, he decided that it was an opportunity that he could not afford to miss.
MORE ABOUT