Poll boost for Britain's Brown sustained

London, July 22: Britain's new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, holds a healthy lead over the main opposition party and most voters believe he should hold an early general election, polls showed today Brown's Labour Party got a boost in opinion polls after he took over from the unpopular Tony Blair in June and two surveys published today showed that lead was being sustained.

A YouGov poll put Labour on 40 per cent, ahead of the main opposition Conservative Party on 33 per cent. An Ipsos MORI poll had Labour on 41 per cent and the Conservatives on 35 per cent.

Brown took over from Blair without a general election after becoming Labour leader. He does not have to hold a national vote until May 2010 and is widely expected to wait until 2009.

However the YouGov poll of 1,664 voters conducted on July 19-20 showed 54 per cent wanted Brown to call an early election to give his government its own mandate to rule.

Labour's poll boost, signs Conservative leader David Cameron is under pressure from within his party, and the risk interest rates at six-year highs might dent economic growth in the coming years, could argue in favour of an early election.

Speculation was rife after Brown named development minister Douglas Alexander as his election campaign manager last month and charged the young, rising star with drafting a manifesto.

However Hilary Benn, Britain's new environment minister, played down the speculation on Sunday.

''The only thing that the government is focusing on at the moment, and rightly so, is getting on with the job of work ...

making sure that we are facing up to the challenges of the future,'' he told the BBC. ''And that, whenever the election comes, is how the government will be judged.'' The youthful Cameron helped revive the Conservative Party's fortunes when he became leader in December 2005 and he soon stretched ahead of then prime minister Blair in the polls.

But despite a successful performance in local authority elections this year, the Conservatives were shunted into third place in two votes for seats in parliament last week and Brown outscores Cameron with voters on a range of personal attributes.

And the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, a traditional backer of the Conservatives, said a handful of party lawmakers had lodged a formal request for a vote of no confidence in Cameron.

Cameron dismissed the criticism and said he was ready to fight Brown in a general election now, whatever the polls.

''We're ready to go whenever he has the courage to call it ... we are ready, and we're itching for it,'' Cameron told Sky News. ''Poll leads come and poll leads go.''

REUTERS
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