26 February 2010 / REUTERS, LONDON
Britain’s opposition Conservatives will seek to sharpen their election message at a party meeting this weekend after polls showed ruling Labour whittling away their lead weeks before an election.
The center-right Conservatives, in the political wilderness for 13 years, will focus on the economy and the health service to try to shore up support when delegates gather in the southern city of Brighton. Polls this month have put the Conservative lead over Labour as low as 6-7 points, raising the specter of a hung parliament in which no party wins an outright majority. That prospect alarms financial markets which want a clear verdict and action to reduce a record budget deficit set to exceed 12 percent of GDP this year. Conservative leader David Cameron, who closes the spring forum with a speech on Sunday afternoon, will be under pressure to tell activists how to sway wavering voters. “What they have got to do is to come up with a message that can be sold on the doorstep but not go back to Thatcherite simplicities,” said Tim Bale, senior lecturer in politics at Sussex University in Brighton. “There is some concern that they have overshot when it comes to the age of austerity rhetoric,” added Bale, author of a recent book “The Conservative Party from Thatcher to Cameron.”
