Britain election campaign in homestretch

Campaigning in Britain’s most unpredictable election in years entered the homestretch Tuesday even as the nation began girding itself for a period of political uncertainty stemming from a potential stalemate in Parliament.

The opposition Conservatives remain in the lead in the polls as they try to smash the Labor Party’s 13-year grip on power. But there are increasing signs that no party is likely to emerge from Thursday’s vote with a majority in the House of Commons, which would throw this country into murky political waters not seen here in more than 30 years.

Such a “hung Parliament” would probably set off a furious round of negotiations over who would get to serve as prime minister at the head of either a minority or coalition government. But the last time this happened, in 1974, the result was so unstable that the government fell within months and a new election had to be called.

None of the three men who hope to come out on top ceded any ground to their rivals as they barnstormed the country Tuesday, trying to shore up core voters and win over undecided ones.

Smiling on morning talk shows, shaking hands in discount supermarkets and pounding the lectern at campaign rallies, they told Britons that their future lay in the balance and warned in stark terms of disaster if the other parties took charge.

“Don’t think this is an election without consequences,” Prime Minister Gordon Brown told a group of young people during a campaign stop in central England. “This is an election where there’s a clear choice between a modern economic philosophy that says support the people when there’s an economic problem and an old 1930s economic philosophy that says let people on their own and do not support them in times of need.”

Brown reiterated his theme that Britain’s fragile economic recovery from recession would be safeguarded best by Labor.

After a public relations nightmare last week that saw Brown call a woman “bigoted” without realizing he still had a microphone on, some observers have detected a new burst of energy and passion from the normally broody Scotsman on the hustings over the last few days.

But Labor is still the underdog in the polls behind the Conservatives, who are led by David Cameron. Some observers have warned that Brown could lead his party to its worst showing in decades, and on Tuesday he declared that he would “take full responsibility” for whatever happens.

Some surveys even have Labor narrowly behind the Liberal Democrats, whose sleeper party is surging on the back of leader Nick Clegg’s performance in Britain’s first-ever televised prime ministerial debates.

In an unusual move, a few top Labor politicians encouraged supporters Tuesday to think tactically in casting their ballots, saying that voting Liberal Democrat in some districts would be justifiable if it could keep the Conservative candidate from winning.

Owing to the British electoral system, which puts a premium on winning individual seats in Parliament, the Liberal Democrats’ rise in national polls will probably not translate into enough seats to break out of third place in the House of Commons. But the party could capture many more seats than in the last election in 2005, depriving either Labor or the Tories of a legislative majority.

If that happens, Clegg will be the object of ardent wooing by Labor and the Conservatives. Clegg refuses to say which party he would back, either as a minority government or as a coalition including the Liberal Democrats.

Newspapers and news networks have devoted plenty of ink and airtime to discussing all possible permutations: a “Lib-Lab” alliance, a minority Tory government, an unstable situation that produces a second election in months.

Voters appear divided over whether a Parliament without a dominant party would be a recipe for indecision and turmoil or an opportunity for politicians to work together for a change.

“We are not a multiparty system,” said Patrick Dunleavy, a political scientist at the London School of Economics. The highly adversarial nature of Britain’s Parliament “is not geared to forming coalitions.”

Also, international markets might look askance at the prospect of a hung Parliament or of protracted squabbling over forming a new government, which could weaken the British pound as a result.

But Britain is not as big a stranger as some may think to coalition politics, which is common in the rest of Europe. The devolved assemblies in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have all had to deal with multiparty maneuvering or governance.

Cameron spent part of his whistle-stop tour Tuesday in Northern Ireland, courting a regional party there whose potential members of Parliament could band together with the Conservatives if Cameron’s party falls just short of a majority in the House of Commons.

But he continued to warn against a hung Parliament.

“If you want on Friday a new government that rolls up its sleeves, starts to clear up the mess, then you need to vote Conservative on Thursday. That is the way to get a new government with a new direction,” said Cameron, whose party advocates smaller government and major spending cuts to bring down Britain’s public deficit.

Clegg urged supporters in Liverpool to break the two-party hold on British politics.

“We can’t afford as a country, as a community, to carry on doing the same old thing, with the same old politicians making the same old promises, breaking the same old promises, letting you and your family down,” he said. “We’ve got 48 hours to do something different, to do something new.”

henry.chu@latimes.com

Janet Stobart in The Times’ London Bureau contributed to this report.