UK's Labour party faces EU election rout[fr][de] 

Two weekend polls suggested Labour could slip to an embarrassing third place in the EU elections.

An ICM poll in the Sunday Telegraph found that only 17% of voters planned to vote Labour, behind the Conservatives on 29% and the Liberal Democrats on 20%.

Such a result would put the opposition Conservatives in pole position to win a national election that Brown must call within the next year, and could lead critics in the Labour Party to mount a challenge to Brown's leadership.

Brown, struggling to assert his authority as a sleaze scandal tarnishes Britain's main political parties, said he had a duty to clean up the system and to get Britain through a severe recession before he called a national election.

"I'm staying on to do the job I need to do," Brown told BBC radio when he asked if he could be persuaded to step down for the sake of his party.
All the main parties are involved but voters look set to punish Labour, the party of government since 1997, at European Parliament and local elections on Thursday.

Finance minister in spotlight

Meanwhile, the spotlight in the expenses scandal turned on Monday on Brown's finance minister Alistair Darling, the architect of plans to pour billions of pounds into shoring up shaky British banks and into trying to boost the economy.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper, which has obtained records of MPs' expenses and published them over the last few weeks, reported that Darling had claimed expenses on a service charge on a London flat he let to tenants while also claiming living expenses for another home provided free by the government.

Darling denied the report, saying he was living in the flat when he claimed the service charge. He promised to repay the charge for the last few months of 2007 when he had moved out.

The opposition Liberal Democrats have called on Darling to resign and there has been speculation Brown could move him in a cabinet reshuffle expected soon after Thursday's election.

Around a dozen members of parliament, both Labour and Conservative, have said they will step down at the next election after being criticised over their expenses.

Conservative leader David Cameron says the best way to clean up the system is to hold an immediate national election.

But Brown rebuffed those calls. "We have a duty before we go to an election to show the country that [...] the system has been cleaned up," he said. "I have got a responsibility to complete the work, which is taking Britain out of the worst economic downturn we've had for years," he added. 

He announced he would set up a 'National Council for Democratic Renewal', inviting people from outside the political system to help reform it. 

(EurActiv with Reuters.)