Britain's opposition Conservatives pledged to cut public spending to rein in a huge budget deficit and called for a sweeping overhaul of the economy as they kicked off their campaign for this year's election today.
The Conservatives, favourites to win the vote, stole a march on prime minister Gordon Brown's Labour Party by announcing they were going into campaign mode, even though the election could still be five months away.
"We are starting our campaign to win the general election today," centre-right Conservative leader David Cameron said in a speech in Oxfordshire.
Mr Cameron made clear that the main election battleground will be the economy and how to rein in government borrowing forecast to reach £178 billion this year.
The fast-growing national debt was "the greatest single risk to sustained economic recovery," Mr Cameron said. "That's why we've been clear about our intention to cut public spending."
Beyond that, he said, "to have a hope of competing in the decades to come, our economy needs a complete overhaul."
"We need to build an enterprise economy ... We need change right across the board: tax, regulation, banking infrastructure," he said.
Mr Cameron has argued in the past that, unless Britain acts quickly to cut the deficit, creditors could lose confidence in Britain, driving up interest rates and stifling recovery.
Mr Brown resists cutting spending too soon, saying it is vital to nurture economic recovery after a deep recession that has slashed British output by six percent.
Issuing a call for change that echoed US president Barack Obama's campaign slogan, Cameron said his party would publish the first chapter of its election manifesto - expected to focus on the state-run National Health Service - on Monday.
In an effort to make politics less partisan, Mr Cameron said that, if elected, he would regularly invite opposition leaders to war cabinets on Afghanistan.
Labour cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw attacked the Conservatives as a party that favoured the privileged, telling Sky News that "simply mouthing platitudes about change will not be enough to win the confidence of the British people."
Although Mr Brown does not have to call an election until early June, there has been speculation he may try to catch the Conservatives off-guard by going to the polls as early as March.
Labour has won the last three national elections but its popularity has slumped because of the severe recession and a scandal over politicians' extravagant expenses.
The latest opinion poll showed Mr Cameron's Conservatives with a 10-point lead over Labour, enough to give them a small majority in parliament. But there have been some signs of a Labour fightback, suggesting the Conservatives could fall short of an overall majority.
That would be a nightmare scenario for financial markets, which fear a minority or coalition government would be too weak to take decisive action to tackle the deficit.
Britain has lagged most other major economies in emerging from recession, but analysts expect growth to have resumed in the fourth quarter of 2009, allowing Brown to point to hopeful signs for the future.
Reuters