CONSERVATIVE PARTY leader David Cameron, faced with an ever-closing gap between the Tories and Labour in opinion polls, has told voters that “another five years” of Gordon Brown in 10 Downing Street would be a disaster for Britain.
“We have to win because the country is in a complete mess and it’s our patriotic duty to win and turn this country around,” he told Tory delegates in Brighton yesterday.
The latest YouGov opinion poll indicates that Labour is just two points behind the Conservatives and would win significantly more seats in the House of Commons – Labour’s best showing in two years.
If repeated in a general election, Labour would be just nine seats short of the 326 needed for a majority in the new 650-seat House of Commons, but it would leave Mr Brown in the lead position to form a minority or coalition administration.
Clearly buoyed by Labour’s improved ratings, Mr Brown said on Saturday that the Conservatives were offering “not a manifesto, but a masquerade, not a vote for change that would take us forwards, but take us backwards”.
Focusing strongly on Mr Brown in his speech yesterday, Mr Cameron said: “I think everyone knows that another five years of Gordon Brown would be a disaster for our country.
“Another five years of spending and bloat and waste and debt and taxes,” he added.
It would offer the prospect, he said, of “another five years of a government that is so dysfunctional, so divided, so weak”, with ministers “who can’t work with him but can’t get rid of him”.
Labour, Mr Cameron said, was “locked in this dangerous dance of death that is dragging our whole country down”. He added that “every day Gordon Brown is running the country is another grey day for Britain”.
But worryingly for Mr Cameron, the breakdown of the YouGov poll shows that Labour is now more trusted to run the economy – partly, it must be assumed, by the slight signs of economic recovery in recent months.
The survey also discloses growing concerns among voters about Mr Cameron’s elite background and a perceived lack of empathy with ordinary families.
Labour’s attacks on his Eton-education background seem to have struck home, with just a quarter of those polled believing he understands “the problems of people like me”, compared with 35 per cent for Mr Brown.
The poll also indicates that the allegations about bullying made against Mr Brown have helped, not hindered, the prime minister.
Just 28 per cent believe he is a bully, while 50 per cent agree that he has a “strong sense of right and wrong”.
Though calls for tougher action on immigration provoked the strongest applause from the Brighton audience, Mr Cameron is resisting pressure from some members of the party to toughen his language on the issue.
In a webcam video released at the weekend, Mr Cameron said he had got a “lot of advice” from his own side: “Some say, ‘Go back to what you might call the Conservative comfort zone and just bang out the old tunes’.”
However, he told the Brighton delegates: “This party, our party, represents this tolerant, compassionate, brilliant multiracial country.
“We are with you, we are like you, we are for you. This modernising party has made its choice and it’s never going back.”
Ethnic minority candidates were given a high profile throughout the weekend, while Mr Cameron presented the party’s plans to curb immigration as reasonable actions that were not spurred on by ideology.