BRITAIN:Gordon Brown sent Labour MPs on holiday in happy mood yesterday with a strong display of prime ministerial authority following a new poll showing support for David Cameron's Conservatives plummeting. Frank Millar, London Editor, reports.
Following apparent U-turns on drugs, gambling and 24-hour drinking, the prime minister seemed to move further on to "conservative" ground, announcing plans for a unified border patrol force previously rejected by ministers.
At the same time Mr Brown sought to outflank Mr Cameron with a repackaged plan to allow police to detain terror suspects beyond the present 28 days in "rare" and exceptional circumstances.
With the flooding crisis and national security issues dominating their exchanges on the last day before the Commons' recess, Mr Cameron thus found himself constrained following criticism of his absence on a trip to Rwanda at the start of the week and the first suggestions of a threatened "crisis" over his leadership.
Ahead of Mr Brown's security statement, the Brown/Cameron exchanges during Prime Minister's Questions were dominated by the unprecedented flooding in England.
But when Mr Cameron allowed himself an attack on Mr Brown's broken promise of a referendum on the new EU treaty/constitution, the prime minister hit back with a well-prepared soundbite. "He's back to the old agenda," Mr Brown charged, citing Tory arguments over Europe, grammar schools and tax cuts. "It didn't take long after the Ealing Southall byelection."
Tory gloom over the party's third place in last week's Ealing and Sedgefield byelections was compounded by yesterday's ICM poll suggesting Conservative voters are losing their enthusiasm for Mr Cameron, while he is failing to attract new support.
ICM gave Labour a six-point lead, with the Conservatives on their lowest share since the dying days of Michael Howard's leadership in 2005. In further evidence of a growing "Brown bounce" the poll found 21 per cent of voters saying their opinion of Mr Brown has improved during his first month as prime minister, as opposed to 8 per cent saying it had fallen. Some 21 per cent said their opinion of Mr Cameron had dropped since Mr Brown took over at Number 10.
Emboldened by such findings, Mr Brown quoted former Tory treasurer Lord Kalms - who declared himself "disillusioned to a substantial degree with Mr Cameron" - telling the Tory leader he should come back in the autumn having had "a rethink".
While stressing his desire for cross-party consensus on a new anti-terror Bill, Mr Brown also urged Mr Cameron to "think again" about his suggestion that a British bill of rights as an alternative to the European Convention would help with the deportation of foreign terror suspects.
Mr Brown told MPs he expected some 4,000 foreign prisoners to be deported this year, while confirming that the UK is resisting the entry of almost 200 people suspected of terrorist links.
The security services are dealing with 30 known plots involving 200 groups or networks and some 2,000 individuals in what Mr Brown described as "a generation-long threat" to the UK.
With Britain's "first line of defence" being overseas, the prime minister said from March next year biometric visas would be extended to all visa applicants.