Europe

Home page

Europe

Brown puts economy at heart of election fight

28 March 2010 05:29 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Prime Minister Gordon Brown put economic recovery at the heart of his battle for re-election Saturday, as he unveiled his Labour party’s key pledges for the vote expected within weeks, APA reports quoting AFP.
A confident Brown, buoyed by opinion polls showing the race between Labour and the opposition Conservatives has narrowed sharply, said he would fight to win as both sides ramped up campaigning ahead of the election expected on May 6.
"When people ask what are my top three priorities for the country, let me tell them -- keeping on the road to recovery, keeping on the road to recovery, keeping on the road to recovery," Brown said in Nottingham.
In a thinly-veiled attack on the Conservatives, he warned of the dangers of taking the wrong decisions as Britain emerges from a deep recession.
"Securing the economic recovery or wrecking it -- that is the choice the country will face in the weeks ahead," the prime minister said.
Conservative leader David Cameron immediately hit back, saying the suggestion Labour had done well on the economy was an "insult to people’s intelligence."
In a speech in Milton Keynes, Cameron said: "On their economic record alone, which is what they’re running on, they do not deserve to be re-elected."
Britain escaped recession in the final quarter of 2009 after six quarters of contraction, the longest on record here. It exited after the United States, France and Germany, and experts have warned of the risk of a relapse.
The Conservatives had been leading the Labour party by double digits in the opinion polls, but in recent months the gap has narrowed to just a few points.
Brown insisted Saturday that he was in the race to win, denying suggestions Labour has run out of steam after 13 years in power.
"We may be the underdog but we are the people’s party and we never give up," he said, adding: "We have big plans for this country -- and we intend to see them through."
Brown outlined Labour’s five key election pledges: securing the economy, raising family living standards, building a high-tech economy, protecting frontline public services and strengthening fairness in communities.
These included plans to help first-time home buyers, provide broadband Internet access for everyone, protect investment in policing, schools, childcare and the health service, and crack down on anti-social behaviour.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling included some of these measures Wednesday in the government’s final budget before the election, which Brown is expected to call within days.
Some 33 percent of people questioned for the BBC afterwards said they trusted Brown and Darling most to steer Britain through the downturn, against 27 percent who favoured Cameron and his finance spokesman George Osborne.
However, Cameron warned that Labour’s determination to delay cutting the deficit or public spending, for fear of damaging the recovery, risked sending Britain into a debt crisis such as that seen in Greece.
"If we don’t act, and act soon, the same could happen to us," he said.
The Conservative leader acknowledged the election "is going to be a tough fight" but insisted his party represented a fresh start.
"This is an election we absolutely have to win for the good of our country," he said.
Nick Clegg, the leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats, rejected both leaders’ claims to provide any new ideas.
"Between them Labour and the Conservatives have failed to come up with a single specific positive reason to vote for them," he said. "This is the old politics and the old politics is simply not good enough anymore."