They say there is a risk of a hung parliament in which neither main party has an outright majority, and warn this would threaten the country with political paralysis. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said this weekend his focus for the election would be to promise more people the chance to climb the social ladder - a direct appeal to centrist voters who have increasingly lost faith in the Labour Party,in power since 1997. Labour said on Monday it would give assistance to gifted but poor schoolchildren and expand internships for university students to help more young people break into high-flying careers such as the law and medicine.
"We can't be a truly aspirational society if some people are still denied the chance to get on, and although we have raised the glass ceiling, we have yet to break it," Brown said. "That is why our priority will be to remove all the barriers that are holding people back."
Conservative leader David Cameron hit back with "brazenly elitist" plans to allow only the best university graduates to apply for become teachers, in an effort to improve the overall standard of education. "There aren't enough good schools in our country," Cameron said at an inner city college in London. "We are failing too many of our children." Cameron was educated at the elite, fee-paying Eton College.
Brown, who took over from Tony Blair in 2007 after 10 years as finance minister, saw an initial honeymoon period fade fast as Britain fell into an 18-month recession and an expenses scandal severely damaged parliament's reputatiom. Several failed attempts from within Labour to replace him have further damaged the party but Cameron, criticised for being vague on policy so far, has still struggled to make his lead in the opinion polls an unassailable one.
One poll this weekend put the Conservatives nine points ahead of Labour, while another gave the opposition a 13-point lead, which could translate into a 70-seat majority in parliament. Labour strategists hope a recovering economy and a lurch to the left by centrist swing voters - who helped Blair's "New Labour" to a landslide win in 1997 and smaller victories in 2001 and 2005 - will enable the party in power to turn the tide.
In response, the centre-right Conservatives have started to publish their draft election manifesto, promising on Monday a fairer and more effective education system as part of plans to mend what the party calls "broken Britain". "Not enough of our brightest people consider going into teaching, especially those in the subjects we need - like maths - and in the schools that would benefit most from their knowledge - tough inner-city ones," Cameron said.