Campaign week ends with pledge to ‘make poverty history’
The weekend’s campaigning ends on World Poverty Day, with the three main political parties’ leaders making speeches on international development aid.
Speaking alongside Chancellor Gordon Brown at a World Poverty Day rally in London this afternoon, Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged to meet the Millennium Development Goals and eventually end global poverty.
The rally heard speeches from former US President Bill Clinton via satellite link, before Gordon Brown and Tony Blair both spoke passionately on the overriding moral commitments to eradicate third world debt.
In a personal pledge, Mr Blair said that wealthy governments could not have the deaths of millions people on their conscience (full story).
Earlier in the day, Conservative leader Michael Howard emphasised ‘education is the key to the future’ in his party’s approach to addressing world poverty.
He delivered a heartfelt lunchtime speech during a visit to the Tabernacle Christian Centre in London. Mr Howard described the desire to alleviate put an end to world poverty as both ‘noble’ and ‘necessary’.
Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy said that ending global poverty, “is not only the right thing to do morally, it is in our international interest” (full story).
Chancellor Gordon Brown had begun the day setting out the moral case for increasing international development aid. He told a church congregation in Isleworth, west London, “we are bound together as citizens and nations under one moral universe”.
Continuing debate on the Iraq war broke the day’s consensus, with Liberal Democrat Charles Kennedy suggesting it was “the worst foreign policy mistake since 1956 Suez”.
He backed calls for the Attorney General’s legal advice to be published in full after a Sunday newspaper claimed to have new evidence on the legality of the war.
In a plea to anti-war voters, The Lib Dem leader advised the public would be “perfectly entitled” to view the election as a referendum on the war.
Michael Howard suggested the Prime Minister had lied on intelligence in the run up to the war.
Speaking on Breakfast with Frost this morning, Mr Howard said, “On the one thing that he’s taken a stand, in the eight years that he’s been prime minister, which was taking us to war, he didn’t even tell the truth about that” (full story).
In Scotland, Deputy SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon launched the SNP’s ‘Scotland in the World’ Mini-manifesto. Bruce Crawford MSP was in Kinross for the Save The Scottish Regiments campaign.
Campaigning in Northern Ireland was dominated by former Leader of the SDLP, John Hume, flanked by Deputy Leader Alasdair McDonnell and General Election candidate Alex Attwood in a protest against the decision from Belfast Education and Library Board to cut more than 100 school crossing posts.
