Brown enjoys Budget week
It was a good week for Gordon Brown. On Wednesday the Chancellor unveiled a Budget that was generally well received (full story).
On Thursday, he was out spearheading Labour’s pre-general election campaign with the launch of a poster attacking Conservative spending plans (full story).
And by Friday he was named as Labour’s main electoral asset in a YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph (full story).
Indeed the only negative point to the week, aside from the inevitable attacks on his Budget by the Conservatives (full story), was the news that a Save the Scottish Regiments’ campaigner was going to stand against the Chancellor in the new seat of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (full story).
The week began well for the Conservatives, with Michael Howard telling the party’s spring conference in Brighton that Labour was “rattled” by the Conservative opposition (full story).
They were further boosted by two polls. On Sunday an ICM poll in The News of the World suggested that female voters were turning away from Tony Blair and the Labour Party (full story). And on Tuesday, an NOP poll for The Independent put Labour only five points ahead of the Conservatives (full story).
Even the Catholic church was telling its flock to vote Conservative, following Michael Howard’s comments that he would reduce the legal limit for having an abortion from 24 to 20 weeks (full story).
The Liberal Democrats meanwhile held their Welsh spring conference, and leader Charles Kennedy promised a review of prescription charges (full story).
