Party leaders vie for pre-election limelight
Updated on 13 December 2009
The prime minister overnights with British troops in Afghanistan, as there is growing talk of an early general election battle at home.
Gordon Brown's pre-Christmas visit to the forces in Afghanistan would have taken place anyway.
But with David Cameron now publicly admitting they are re preparing for a possible March election, both main parties are announcing changes on unpopular issues.
The prime minister stayed with British troops in Afghanistan, and the Conservative leader announced that all MPs and peers should be legally bound to pay tax in Britain.
In Kandahar, Gordon Brown became the first prime minister, it is thought since Churchill, to spend the night in a theatre of war: bedding down with troops in "basic quarters" to demonstrate empathy for their day to day lives.
The prime minister also met his Afghan counterpart for the first time since President Karzai's controversial re-election. Gordon Brown demanded his host crack down on corruption, and increase the Afghan-isation of security.
Mr Brown wants to prove he has an exit plan before the British public lose faith in the war.
Back in London, Labour strategists are reported to be planning for a snap general election. David Cameron said this morning he suspected, and was ready for, 25 March next year.
Mr Cameron had his own headline grabbing initiative to pull out of the bag with his plans to rush through legislation requiring all parliamentarians "to be or be treated as a full UK taxpayer". That, he hopes, will deflect Labour accusations of Toff Tories.
Millionaire and Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith is the latest of his star recruits to have admitted his past as a non-dom. Mr Cameron has also come under pressure to explain the tax status of the Conservative donor Lord Ashcroft.
All these political developments coincide with new opinion polls with contradictory findings. One is relatively encouraging for Labour, putting them just nine points behind the Conservatives at 40 per cent and the Lib Dems at a disappointing 16. The other, for the Independent on Sunday, shows the Tories extending their lead to 41 per cent over Labour's 24 per cent, and the Lib Dems up on 21.
Andrew Hawkins, chief executive of ComRes, which conducted the Independent on Sunday poll, told Channel 4 News: "With the two polls published today you need to look behind the headline figures of party vote share and see what the reaction was, for example to the pre-budget report earlier this week.
"There are two really interesting measures. One was that the majority of people thought that they'd be worse off as a result of the PBR, and the second issue was over the increase in national insurance contributions, where again a majority of people didn't like what the chancellor announced earlier this week.
"I wasn't that surprised to see Labour's vote share hit. What's perhaps encouraging to Labour is that the Conservative vote share hasn't gone up appreciably either. They're still struggling to stay over that critical 40 per cent figure.
"What we need to bear in mind is that the Conservative need to be about 10 per cent ahead of Labour just to get a majority of one. They still need to win 117 seats from other parties in order to get that majority."
