BRITAIN: The British Conservative Party leader, Mr Michael Howard, sought to lift his party's pre-election gloom yesterday with a return to a tax-cutting agenda aimed in the first instance at Britain's lowest-paid workers.
But the Tory leader had to compete on a day of "pre-pre-election" campaigning with a cheerful Mr Charles Kennedy proclaiming his Liberal Democrats the "authentic opposition" to New Labour in the general election expected in May.
Urging voters who opposed the Iraq war, the introduction of student top-up fees and government plans for ID cards to back the Lib Dems, Mr Kennedy clearly ruled out the possibility of co-operation with the Blair government in the event of a hung parliament.
Signalling his party's return to its Thatcherite instincts, Mr Howard and Shadow Chancellor Oliver Letwin pledged to cut £35 billion (€49.8 billion) from "wasteful" government spending and to deliver a £4 billion (€5.7 billion) package of tax cuts in the first year of a Conservative government.
They revealed that the tax cuts would be financed by axing some 235,000 civil service jobs, 168 public bodies or quangos, and three of Chancellor Gordon Brown's New Deal schemes.
Two-thirds of the proposed savings would be redirected to frontline services like schools and hospitals, while £8 billion (€11.4 billion) would be used to plug the alleged "black hole" in the Chancellor's spending plans.
But in a move to pre-empt charges that the Conservatives are the party of the rich, Mr Howard and Mr Letwin made it clear that the first Tory tax-cuts would be targeted at "hard-working families and hard-pressed businesses".
With employees paying tax and national insurance as soon as they earn £4,745 per year, Mr Howard said: "I think it is outrageous that someone who works 20 hours a week on the minimum wage pays income tax. That can't be right."
Mr Howard declared voters faced a clear choice: "More waste and higher taxes under Mr Blair or value for money and lower taxes under the Conservatives."
Labour's election co-ordinator Mr Alan Milburn declared this "a fraudulent prospectus" while Mr Kennedy suggested there was "an air of incredibility" about the Conservative figures.
"This can't be achieved without drastic cuts in local services in their own communities," insisted Mr Kennedy, while confirming that the Liberal Democrats would fight the election on a commitment to introduce a new 50 per cent tax rate for earners of more than £100,000 per year.
However, as Mr Kennedy claimed his party could save £5 billion (€7.1 billion) a year over a four-year parliament - this in line with the Blair government's own review of possible savings on waste - former Chancellor Lord (Norman) Lamont said families were groaning under the burden of an average tax increase of £6,500 a year and suggested the Conservative leadership was in fact being "too cautious".