BRITAIN: The Conservatives turned their attack to the economy yesterday as a morale-sapping poll showed Michael Howard's party heading into the general election still a full eight points behind Labour.
The poll - showing Labour in the lead on seven of eight key issues, including law and order and Europe - punctured the impression among some at Westminster that Tory success in pre-election campaigning had given Mr Howard a fighting chance in the contest expected on May 5th.
Already under fire over his plans for legal curbs on Travellers, Mr Howard returned to another familiar theme yesterday, insisting that only the Conservatives could guarantee economic stability because they would not join the euro.
But as prime minister Tony Blair yesterday insisted that religion should not play the same role in British politics as it does in America, Labour's nerves were settled by the ICM poll for the Guardian, which suggested that Gordon Brown's budget might have increased Labour's lead by as much as five points in a month, with 30 per cent of targeted older voters saying that they were more likely to vote Labour as a result of it.
On another day of frenetic campaigning by all three main parties, personal tragedy - the confirmed death of a 36-hour-old baby boy from the MRSA superbug - also put the Conservatives' demand for cleaner hospitals back at centre-stage.
Mr Howard, whose mother-in-law was also a victim of MRSA, sent his sympathies to the family of Luke Day, who died the day after being born in Ipswich Hospital on February 2nd.
Health secretary John Reid said that every one of 2,000 infant deaths recorded each year was a tragedy. However, he stressed that, on average, just one of those deaths was the result of MRSA.
Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats launched a £100,000 newspaper advertising campaign to promote their stance on 10 issues, ranging from health care to student fees and the war in Iraq. Amid fears that the Lib Dems could be eclipsed as the real election battle gathers pace, party leader Charles Kennedy vowed to stay out of the Labour and Conservative mud-slinging and emphasised that he was putting forward a positive agenda to create greater fairness. By doing this, his party would be clearly marked out from both Labour and the Conservatives.
However Labour campaign spokesman Fraser Kemp insisted: "Whatever promises they make, the one thing you can be sure of is that a vote for the Liberal Democrats would only help Michael Howard into Number 10 through the back door."