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The battle for Middle England: Brown and Cameron take different roads

07 April 2010 02:57 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Gordon Brown and David Cameron raced across Battleground Britain yesterday revealing starkly differing campaign styles as they vied for momentum and authenticity, APA reports quoting Timesonline.co.uk web page.
They opened election hostilities by heading straight for the suburbs, towns and old industrial fringes that will decide the 2010 result, with the Prime Minister appealing directly to middle-class voters and Mr Cameron asking people to vote for â€œhope, optimism, changeâ€.
The Tory leader travelled to the heart of the country and the contest â€” Yorkshire and the Midlands, home to the largest concentration of marginal seats. Mr Brown, describing himself as a man from an â€œordinary familyâ€ and an â€œordinary townâ€, moved through a string of marginals in Kent, a signal that he is not ready to retreat from the 1997 gains made by new Labor.
With the financial gulf between the parties never wider, the leaders adopted made-to-measure travel arrangements.
Mr Brown sat in standard class on a train to Kent, where he visited a supermarket canteen and met voters for tea and cakes in the living room of a Labor supporter.
Mr Cameron took to the skies in an executive jet for the first of many air miles he intends to clock up during an energetic travel schedule over the next four weeks.
The modes of transport revealed the disparity in spending power â€” Labour is already halfway through its Â£8 million war chest, while the Tories are expected to spend up to the allowed election limit of Â£18.96 million.
The images presented by the two leaders were also carefully struck to set the terms of debate, place their personal imprints on the campaign and persuade voters that they were the most plausible candidate for No 10.
Mr Brown, in confirming the May 6 election date in Downing Street after returning from a 22-minute visit to Buckingham Palace, declared: â€œI come from an ordinary family in an ordinary townâ€ â€” a reminder of his opponentâ€™s privileged upbringing. He continued: â€œIâ€™ve never forgotten where I come from, or the values â€” hard work, duty, fairness, telling the truth â€” my parents instilled in me.â€
The Prime Minister emerged from Downing Street to be flanked â€” unusually for an election announcement â€” by his Cabinet. â€œI am not a team of one, but one of a team,â€ he said, an act of choreography designed to acknowledge both his personal weakness in the polls and also raise questions about the calibre of the Shadow Cabinet.
He asked for a â€œclear and straightforward mandateâ€ from voters and said that he would take one clear message around the country: â€œBritain is now on the way to economic recovery. And now is not the time to put it at risk.â€
Mr Cameron, though, was out of the blocks first, pre-empting Mr Brownâ€™s official confirmation that Parliament would be dissolved next Monday with a mini-rally on the opposite bank of the Thames