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Brown set for Euro vote humiliation: poll

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-05-31 09:33

LONDON -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown looks set to suffer a crushing defeat in European elections next week and most Britons want him to call an early national election, an opinion poll showed on Sunday.

Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown reacts as he meets car owners during a photocall at Downing Street in central London May 29, 2009. [Agencies]

The ICM survey for the Sunday Telegraph also suggested the centrist Liberal Democrats would poll more than the ruling Labour Party were a national election held now, the first time Labour has ranked third on this question in any poll since 1987.

The findings highlight the damage inflicted on Labour by a scandal over lawmakers' perks and may ratchet up speculation over Brown's future.

Asked who they would support in next Thursday's European elections, only 17 percent of voters backed Labour, pushing it well below the Conservatives on 29 percent and the Liberal Democrats on 20 percent.

Support for Brown's centre-left government has crumbled after weeks of reports about lawmakers claiming public money to pay for anything from church donations to swimming pool repairs.

The expenses scandal appears to have hit Labour hardest, with 54 percent of voters saying it had come out worst from the revelations. Just 13 percent named the Conservatives and two percent the Liberal Democrats.

A quarter thought all mainstream parties had been equally tarnished.

Early National Election Call

In a further sign of voters' unhappiness with the country's leaders, 54 percent wanted Brown to call a general election by the end of the year, the bulk of them backing Conservative leader David Cameron's call for an immediate national poll.

A national election does not need to be called until the middle of next year.

Related readings:  UK expenses scandal prompts backlash against Brown  Claims for dog food, light bulbs ... Brown apologizes  Opposition demands Brown apologise for aide's slurs  Two more MPs to step down in UK expenses row  MP: UK expenses row 'a McCarthy-style witch-hunt'

Brown is struggling to lead Britain out of its worst recession in a generation. Unemployment has leapt to a decade-high above 2 million and looks set to climb significantly higher.

Unlike an earlier poll, the ICM survey did not suggest Labour would finish behind the Eurosceptic UK Independence Party in Thursday's European elections.

A poll by Populus for Saturday's Times newspaper suggested support for the anti-European Union group had more than trebled in three weeks, catapulting it into second place behind the Conservatives.

Brown wrote in the Sun newspaper on Saturday that anyone discredited by the scandals of recent weeks would not stand again as a Labour candidate.

The prime minister is expected to reshuffle key ministerial posts next week in an attempt to reassert his authority. But it is not impossible that he himself could face a challenge.

Health Secretary Alan Johnson, the man considered Brown's likeliest successor, acknowledged that Labour was on course for an electoral bruising next week.

"If you are asking me for an honest assessment about whether recent events will have an effect, they are bound to because we are the brand leader," he told the Observer newspaper.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband, another potential successor, used an article in the News of the World to call for a "new approach to politics", becoming the latest cabinet minister to set out a personal vision for future reform.