Key seats targeted as campaign nears end

PARTY leaders targeted key marginal seats yesterday in a final push to win what looks like the closest general election in decades this week.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is struggling to retain power, campaigned in tight seats in eastern England, while Conservative leader David Cameron, who is ahead in polls, was in the northwest and London.

Amid talk of a possible hung parliament, the knife-edge contest on Thursday is increasingly focused on swing voters in a few dozen seats where the results are too close to call and could determine the outcome.

Brown’s Labour has accused Cameron of trying to “give the impression that he is home and dry” after he outlined plans for his first 100 days in power, including an emergency budget and setting up an Afghanistan “war cabinet”.

But despite his party’s opinion poll lead, Cameron insisted: “There has never been an ounce of complacency in my body and there isn’t now and there is everything left to do.”

Announcing a 24-hour campaign blitz from tonight until electioneering ends late tomorrow, he added: “This election is far from won but I think people have the right to know what they would get.”

An opinion poll yesterday gave the Conservatives 34%, unchanged, the Liberal Democrats 29%, up 1%, and Labour 28%, unchanged.

Experts said there were more voters than usual at this stage who had still not decided who to support.

Polling expert Professor Paul Whiteley of Essex University said there were “still lots of people whose votes are to be had” – and party loyalties were far less strong than a few decades ago.

However, Cameron received a boost when another poll suggested the Conservatives were performing strongly enough in marginal constituencies to secure a slim overall majority, albeit of just two seats.

The Ipsos MORI survey for Thomson Reuters was the first for weeks to indicate that Cameron’s party could obtain an overall majority.

Labour has been behind in the polls throughout and Brown’s election hopes took a fresh blow last week when he was caught referring to an elderly female voter as a “bigoted woman”.

He again tried to focus on his economic credentials in leading the global response to the world financial crisis from 2008 in a speech in Ipswich, eastern England.

“This is a fight for the future, this is not an ordinary election, these are not ordinary times, this is a post-global financial crisis election,” he said.

Brown was also confronted by an anti-nuclear protester, who stormed on to the stage where he was speaking in central London brandishing a placard saying “Nukiller Power No” and shouted “we don’t want nuclear power!”

“I’m used to worse,” joked Brown, when a representative of Citizens UK, a civil society group which organised the event, apologised for the disturbance.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, whose party could hold the balance of power in a hung parliament, insisted his party was the only one which could deliver “change”.

“Vote with your heart, vote with your instincts. You have an opportunity of a lifetime, a once in a generation chance to change Britain for good.”

David Cameron, meanwhile, will today seek to reassure voters in the North that they would not be “singled out” for spending cuts under a Tory government.

In his first campaign visit to the province, the Tory leader will promise that it would continue to be funded “according to its needs”.

Cameron caused alarm earlier in the campaign when he said the public sector in the North – along with the north-east of England – would have to be cut back. It prompted a warning from Northern Ireland Secretary, Shaun Woodward, that he would be running a “massive risk” if police numbers were cut back at a time when dissident republicans continued to pose a threat.

According to advance extracts of his speech, Cameron will stress his commitment to protecting frontline public services in the North, while spelling out the need to “grow” the public sector.

“The country faces some difficult decisions ahead on how we will tackle the deficit. I want people to know that if elected I will make these decisions with compassion, reasonableness and a concern for the most disadvantaged,” Cameron is expected to say.