Official: Britain to hold national election May 6
LONDON, England
After months of anticipation over the election date, Brown will
finally play his hand, traveling to Buckingham Palace to ask Queen
Elizabeth II for permission to dissolve Parliament and call the
first national vote since 2005.
A Labour Party official, who requested anonymity to discuss the
announcement in advance, confirmed Brown would announce a May 6
poll on Tuesday, after a morning meeting of his Cabinet and an
audience with the queen.
For Brown, appreciated by some but widely unloved, election day
could end a three-year tenure as prime minister marked by the
near-collapse of the British economy and beset by division within
his party.
Defeat would bring to a close a British political era begun with
Tony Blair's landslide 1997 election victory, which returned the
Labour Party to office and brought an unprecedented three
successive electoral triumphs for the center-left organization.
Britain's Conservatives -- the party of Margaret Thatcher and
Winston Churchill -- hope to win a national election for the first
time since 1992.
Brown -- who has never before contested a national election as
party leader -- planned to almost immediately hit the campaign
trail, seeking to woo voters stung by the impact of the financial
crisis, weary at the war in Afghanistan and furious at a scandal
over lawmakers' inflated and fraudulent expense claims.
The 59-year old, who succeeded Blair in 2007, said he'll stake
his chances on his record in guiding Britain through the global
economic meltdown -- warning that his rivals' plans for immediate
spending cuts to ease crippling national debt threaten to harm, not
speed, the country's recovery.
"I have not spent the last two years taking this economy
through the worst financial recession to sit back and allow a
Conservative Party which has no idea about how to run the economy
to put it all at risk," Brown told the Tuesday edition of
Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper in an interview to announce his
plans -- excerpts of which were available in advance.
Brown's Labour Party is as much as 10 points behind the
Conservatives and their articulate but untested leader, David
Cameron, in some opinion polls. But an unusual electoral map means
the outcome of the election is still uncertain.
An ICM poll published late Sunday by The Guardian newspaper
showed Labour closing in on its main rival -- climbing four points
to 33 percent with the opposition Tories down one point with 37
percent. Other polls, however, showed larger Tory leads.
Britain's recession-wracked economy and enormous debt will
dominate the election campaign. Both Labour and the Conservatives
say they will trim spending and slash the country's 167 billion
pound ($250 billion) deficit -- but they differ on how deep, and how
soon, to make cuts.
Cameron said his task was to convince ordinary Britons he can
lead an economic revival, and offer an upbeat message about the
country's future.
"They're good, decent people -- they're the people of Britain
and they just want a reason to believe that anything is still
possible in our country. This election is about giving them that
reason, giving them that hope. That's the Conservatives mission --
that's my mission -- for the next 30 days and I can't wait to get
started," Cameron said in a statement.
The 43-year-old Cameron has sought to replace his party's fusty,
right-wing image with a more modern brand of "compassionate
Conservatism," and drawn more women and members of ethnic
minorities to a party long dominated by affluent white men like
himself.
However, his party retains a fiscally conservative policy slate
-- pledging to reverse Labour's planned hike to national insurance,
a payroll tax paid by employees and employers, and implement about
6 billion pounds in spending cuts this year. Labour says major cuts
should be deferred until next year to give the economy more time to
recover.
Cameron's party also plans to cut the number of lawmakers, offer
tax breaks to married couples and overhaul Britain's education
system. Brown promises a public referendum on changing Britain's
voting system, improved cancer treatment and a new high speed
national rail network.
The major parties agree on key international issues -- both would
keep British troops in Afghanistan and seek to preserve the
so-called "special relationship" with the U.S.
Both also concede that Britain's next government must make sharp
cuts to services, likely to bring confrontation with labor unions.
Disillusionment at mainstream politics following an expense
claims scandal could benefit small and fringe parties in the
election, including the Greens and the racist British National
Party -- neither of whom currently hold a House of Commons seat.
Brown's Labour Party said the leader planned to visit people in
their homes and workplace canteens in an attempt to break down
voter cynicism -- following advice from strategists who worked with
U.S. President Barack Obama.
But the public expect a more U.S.-style, personality-centered
campaign -- including the first-ever televised debates between the
leaders of Labour, the Conservatives and the third-placed Liberal
Democrats.
With his bicycle riding, informal "call me Dave" manner and
young family -- his wife Samantha is expecting their fourth child in
September -- Cameron is well placed to benefit from a focus on
personality. Some see a parallel with Labour's former savior Blair,
whose confident but easy style helped sweep his party to power in
1997.
Blair disagrees -- and attacked Cameron last week in his first
domestic political speech since leaving office.
Because of the quirks of Britain's electoral system, the
Conservatives will need a large swing to ensure a majority of House
of Commons seats and oust Brown.
The Conservatives lost the 2005 election despite taking a bigger
share of the popular vote than Labour.
Many recent opinion polls suggest the election could result in a
hung Parliament -- in which no party has an absolute majority -- for
the first time since 1974. That results could spell a second
national election later this year.