British Prime Minister Theresa May has declared the age of austerity over with a message to voters that "there are better days ahead".
In her crucial keynote speech to the Conservative conference in Birmingham on Wednesday, Mrs May said next year's post-Brexit Spending Review will set out a programme of increased investment in public services, as a mark that the decade of cuts following the financial crash is coming to an end.
And she announced a new cancer strategy to increase early detection of the illness and save 55,000 lives a year by 2028, along with a ninth successive annual freeze in fuel duty.
Mrs May said she was lifting the cap on councils borrowing to fund new developments, in a move which aides said could lead to additional investment of an estimated STG1 billion ($A1.8 billion) in as many as 10,000 new homes a year.
In a message to voters weary of belt-tightening, the PM said: "Because you made sacrifices, there are better days ahead.
"A decade after the financial crash, people need to know that the austerity it led to is over and that their hard work has paid off"."
Prime Minister Theresa May says she's open to extending the Brexit matter. Source: AAP
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell dismissed Mrs May's austerity claim as "a complete con", saying; "The Government has already told us that spending for the next four years will be hit by many more vicious cuts. Nothing, sadly, has changed."
In a speech designed to rally her party behind her following a conference riven by differences over Brexit, Mrs May warned that squabbling over the details of EU withdrawal might mean "ending up with no Brexit at all".
Standing firmly by her Brexit plan, denounced by Boris Johnson as a "constitutional outrage", Mrs May promised: "If we stick together and hold our nerve, I know we can get a deal that delivers for Britain."
She did not use the word "Chequers" - the name of her country residence where the plan was agreed by Cabinet in July - but aides insisted that this was not intended to signal any shift away from her blueprint.
There was also no mention of the former foreign secretary, who won thunderous applause from 1,500 activists on Tuesday as he called on her to "chuck" the Brexit plan agreed at her country residence in July.
Less than an hour before taking the stage in Birmingham, Mrs May was hit by a call for her removal from former minister James Duddridge, who said she was "incapable" of providing the leadership Tories need.
But she did her best to appear carefree as she sashayed on to the stage to Abba hit Dancing Queen and joked about the coughing fit and collapsing stage backdrop which marred her calamitous conference speech in Manchester last year.
The reprise of the dance steps from her recent African trip surprised not only Tory delegates and TV viewers but even her closest aides and husband Philip, as Mrs May had kept her plans secret.
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