Parties turn focus away from Iraq
Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon spent the day attempting to shift the focus of the campaign away from Iraq. After publishing the Attorney General’s legal advice yesterday, Mr Blair turned his attentions to economic stability under Labour.
The party’s frontmen jointly unveiled Labour’s latest campaign poster on the theme ‘forward not back’. It shows a red forward arrow with the caption ‘Forward with Blair and Brown’ and a blue backwards arrow reading ‘Back with Howard and Letwin’.
Tony Blair then ventured off to Wales, while Gordon Brown returned home to campaign in Scotland.
Switching his focus back to immigration, Conservative leader Michael Howard offered to make the asylum system “more humane”, while also controlling and limiting immigration. Mr Howard repeated his party’s policy to set an annual limit of the number of migrants coming into the UK.
Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy began the day at a conference on older people and financial security in Cardiff, before moving on to campaign in Old Portsmouth. He reiterated his plans for a citizens’ pension would mean older people could retire with “dignity and security”.
The Green Party made a pitch for the front of Saturday morning’s papers, as they unveiled a life-sized ‘melting credibility’ ice sculpture of Tony Blair. Principal Speaker Caroline Lucas MEP, Darren Johnson AM, Hugo Charlton QC and Julia Stephenson took the opportunity to speak on ‘credibility’, drawing attention to their main election themes of people, planet and peace.
In other campaign news, Plaid Cymru’s trade and industry spokesperson, Adam Price, and Miners’ leader and general secretary of NACODS South Wales, Bleddyn Hancock, focused on miners’ related issues.
SNP deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon, meanwhile, branded the Liberal Democrats, who are in coalition with Labour in Holyrood, “a bunch of con artists.
