By IRNA,
London : Britain’s opposition Conservatives appear on course to win next week’s general elections after its leader David Cameron was judged to have emerged as the winner in the final presidential-style debate aired on Thursday night.
The consensus view from opinion polls is that Prime Minister Gordon Brown failed to revive Labour’s chances of staying in power, while Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg struggled to improve his performance in the UK’s first-ever televised election debates.
“If you vote Labour, you get more of the same. If you vote Liberal Democrat, it is uncertainty,” Cameron said in his closing statement, calling for an outright Tory victory to deliver “a clean break” and bring about “change” that the country needs.
Although the momentum is seen to be with the Tory Party ahead of next Thursday’s election, it still remains uncertain that it will win an overall parliamentary majority to be able to form a government on its own.
The latest YouGov poll for the Sun shows Labour lagging in third place with only 27 per cent of the share of the vote, behind the Conservatives on 34 per cent and the Liberal Democrats continuing their surge in popularity on 31 per cent.
Extrapolating such a result in terms of seats, Labour would lose almost 100 of its 345 MPs but would remain in second place due to the anomalies of Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system.
But with time running out, the Tories remain just short of winning half of the 650 parliamentary seats, but may be able to form a government with up to 10 Northern Ireland unionist MPs who are expected to win seats.