British Election Campaign Opens
2001-05-10

Category Election Nations U.K. City London Metropolitan Greater London Event 2001 U.K. Elections

LONDON - Britain's major parties threw themselves into campaigning Wednesday for elections set for June 7, with Conservatives saying Tony Blair's Labor Party would increase taxes if it stays in power.

An opinion poll published a day after Blair announced the elections gave him a double-digit lead in the race: 51 percent said they support Labor, compared to 31 percent for William Hague's Conservatives and 13 percent for the centrist Liberal Democrats, AP reported.

Thirty-seven percent said they considered Blair a strong leader, while 13 percent said the same of Hague. The NOP poll, published in the Daily Express newspaper, surveyed 1,000 voters between Friday and Monday, with a margin of error of three percent.

Treasury chief Gordon Brown laid out his Labor Party's economic goals: economic stability, high productivity, full employment, family prosperity and excellence in education.

Any tax cuts must come within that framework, he said, and be targeted at those most in need.

Brown said nothing about one of the most contentious economic issues: whether Britain will join the European single currency. Blair says a decision will be made after the election, while the Conservatives have already decided they would not join if they win the election.

Brown said it is the government's responsibility ``to entrench a long-term culture of stability so that people no longer expect that every period of growth ... will be followed by an inflationary prices and wages spiral, soaring interest rates, and recession.''

Michael Portillo, the Tories' spokesman on the economy, said Labor had no intention of cutting taxes.

Rather, ``a Labor second term would lead to more stealth taxes piled on to the people least able to pay,'' Portillo said.

``Gordon Brown's achievement has been to make the poorest pay most and actually increase the number living in poverty.'' he said. The Tories, who like to paint Labor the party of high taxation, accuse Blair's government of raising more revenue by slapping higher taxes on consumer products like gasoline.

Brown said from 2003 the government proposes to offer tax breaks to some of the unemployed who go back into work, including single parents and the disabled. He also promised to streamline state benefits to parents of underage children.

In contrast to the two main parties, the small, centrist Liberal Democrat party has said it plans to raise taxes to pay for improvements in public services, particularly schools, policing and the state health service.