But Speirs insisted the party should not “lurch to the Right” in a bid to reconnect with “the base”, saying he claimed support across the moderate and conservative wings of the party-room.

Despite railing against dynastic succession, he insists he has no conflict with veteran Liberal moderate Vickie Chapman – who last week wouldn’t rule out quitting parliament if he was elected to the leadership – saying the former Deputy Premier “will have a role in some part of the party… for the rest of her days”.

Speirs today ended weeks of speculation about his intentions by confirming his candidacy in a Liberal leadership ballot to replace outgoing Steven Marshall, at a party-room meeting next Tuesday.

He said he wouldn’t rule out a frontbench role for Chapman if he wins the leadership – while unequivocally asserting there would be a shadow ministry for Marshall’s former press secretary Ashton Hurn, who was elected to parliament in the seat of Schubert last month.

Speirs will face off against former Speaker and (briefly) Local Government and Planning Minister Josh Teague, and maverick backbencher Nick McBride – both of whom entered parliament at the 2018 election.

Speirs, who was first elected four years earlier, was previously a Marion councillor and bureaucrat who worked in the Department of Premier and Cabinet under Mike Rann.

But he today pitched his leadership towards re-engagement with regional communities and small business, the party’s core constituency that he says “might have drifted a bit in recent years”.

Addressing the media at a beachside café in his southern seat of Black, Speirs said the fact he managed to avoid the double digit swings against the Government in the electorate that cost neighbouring seats such as Gibson and Davenport showed “I can connect with ordinary South Australians” – a task he wants to broaden across the state.

While declining to name Chapman or his opponent Teague – whose father Baden was a longtime Liberal senator – Speirs said “I think the party has a number of dynasties which have been involved for a long period of time”.

He said they reflected “Old Adelaide and Old SA organisations and businesses, and while those people ought to be respected for the contribution they’ve made to the state, there’s a new economy, a fresh economy, and many hundreds of thousands of people not associated with that old way of doing things”.

“I want to look to the future and refresh the way the party does things,” he said.

He said Liberals had run a “lousy campaign” – citing a poor reception for both the city arena and the scrapping of the Adelaide 500 – suggesting he raised concerns with the party leadership before the election.

“There was plenty of discussions internally about the way the campaign was going… myself and many colleagues made statements and raised suggestions about how we could do things better,” he said.

“There’s an opportunity for the party to step back and look at these matters very carefully.”

He said the party should apologise to Liberal voters who wanted a Liberal Government elected, but conceded many of those would not have felt like they had a truly Liberal Government for the past four years.

“I think that’s something that has been raised – people talk about abandoning the base… but what is the base?” he said.

“We’ve got to be very careful about what that means – I don’t think it necessarily means arch-conservative people with particularly right-wing views… I think we have to be very careful not to lurch off to the Right in order to placate the so-called base.

“This party needs to look very carefully at our traditional constituencies – regional towns, regional communities, small businesses.”

Speirs is factionally unaligned, but flagged his conservative credentials in last year’s abortion law debate, when he championed a series of amendments to a Bill strongly supported by then-Attorney-General Chapman.

He also addressed the Southland Church in Pasadena last year, telling the congregation religious communities should be engaged in the political process and to “forget the separation of church and state” – a comment he today claimed had been reported out of context, despite the original InDaily report containing a full video of his speech.

But he said that now-Premier Peter Malinauskas “voted in favour of my amendment to create a higher threshold around late-“, adding: “I think Peter and I share very similar views around this sort of things.”

“Ideologically, on many of those social issues I share beliefs with the Right of the Labor Party,” he told ABC Radio earlier today.

Speirs admits he gave “due consideration” to nominating for the recent preselection battle for the federal seat of Boothby, which he ultimately did not contest.

“Some people approached me about it, I gave it fair consideration… but I like to be able to be connected to my community [and] heading off to Canberra 22 weeks a year just wasn’t for me,” he said.