BRITAIN: The Liberal Democrats yesterday appealed to Labour supporters in key marginals to support their campaign to "decapitate" the Conservative leadership.
Party president Simon Hughes made the "lend us your vote" call as party leader Charles Kennedy prepared to visit two marginal seats, currently held by Conservative shadow home secretary David Davis and shadow chancellor Oliver Letwin.
The renewed talk of anti-Conservative "tactical voting" will add to Tory tensions, with a number of new opinion polls again expected to confirm a Labour lead of some seven points with just two weeks to go to polling day.
Despite earlier denials, there were continuing reports yesterday of pressure on Conservative leader Michael Howard from senior colleagues to tone down his rhetoric on immigration and asylum. And the Tory-supporting Daily Telegraph added its voice, saying Mr Howard should now "stop banging on about immigration and asylum-seekers and move on to the meatier, everyday issues that divide the two main parties".
The paper spoke out in an editorial welcoming Mr Howard's announcement that a Conservative government would scrap the revaluation of homes for council tax bills which he claimed would amount to another £2 billion "stealth tax" under Labour.
For the second time in a week, taking the initiative on important aspects of tax policy, Mr Howard said the move would halt "a relentless rise" in council tax bills and save seven million households a further £270-a-year increase.
Prime minister Tony Blair said Mr Howard's proposal was "a complete con" while maintaining Labour's line that the revaluation exercise was not about increasing revenue. In his last budget, chancellor Gordon Brown offered pensioners who pay the tax a one-off £200 rebate this autumn.
With the Lib Dems committed to introduce a new local income tax, party leader Charles Kennedy suggested the council tax had become Mr Blair's "poll tax", while accusing the Conservatives of a U-turn after backing revaluation until just a month ago.
However, as environment minister Margaret Beckett opened a fresh attack on Mr Howard - branding him more Thatcherite than Thatcher - the man Mr Howard replaced as Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, said the decision to scrap the revaluation would prove "one of the best decisions" the leadership had taken.
However, Mrs Beckett said yesterday's U-turn was "just the latest example of Michael Howard showing he is prepared to say anything, do anything, jump on any bandwagon in his desperate bid for power.
"People will look at Mr Howard's campaign - nasty, negative, unscrupulous, opportunist, unprincipled, unfit for office and know they [the Conservatives] deserve to lose. Mr Howard deserves defeat for basing his campaign, not on an alternative programme for government, but on a list of grievances."
Mr Blair had a sharp reminder of the "trust" issue on his first walkabout of the election campaign yesterday in Leeds.
Twenty-year-old student Jessica Haigh accepted an invitation from Labour officials to meet "a senior minister", and took the opportunity to criticise Mr Blair over Iraq and his alleged desertion of Labour "values".
Meanwhile, one man was charged with possession of an offensive weapon, a second was cautioned and a third is still being questioned by police after a group of 40 Islamic militants reportedly broke into a meeting in east London to denounce the Respect anti-war candidate George Galloway as a "false prophet", for which they declared the sentence was "death".