Azernews.Az

By Bloomberg

Four months before an election that most pollsters say he’ll lose, David Cameron offered voters a repeat of his message from the past year, that only his Conservatives can be trusted to deliver economic recovery in the U.K.

A survey of polling experts in the Independent on Sunday newspaper found only one predicting Cameron’s Tories would come out of the May 7 general election ahead. Most thought the opposition Labour Party would have more seats in Parliament, without clinching an outright majority.

The prime minister used a New Year interview to insist that his ambitions to cut spending and run a budget surplus by 2018 were both realistic and necessary. The plan has been attacked both by Labour, who argue it implies an end to the National Health Service, and Cameron’s Liberal Democrat coalition partners.

“We all have debts and the country has debts, and every year so far we’ve been adding to those debts,” Cameron told the BBC’s “Andrew Marr Show.” “There should be some years when you’re starting to pay down your debts. That is what we are proposing.”

Labour and the Liberal Democrats “want to go on borrowing year after year, and never paying back any money,” said Cameron, a prospect he said “genuinely does frighten me.”

Cameron is seeking to convince the electorate that his party is best-placed to nurture an economic recovery threatened by stagnation in key foreign markets including the euro region. He also faces a battle to keep voters from switching support to smaller rivals such as the anti-immigration U.K. Independence Party.

Merkel Talks

The prime minister, who will meet with his German counterpart Angela Merkel in London on Jan. 7, said his proposed renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with the European Union, which would include changes to immigration rules, isn’t being scaled back. “The changes we need are changes that are good for Britain and good for Europe,” he said. “They do involve treaty change, proper, full-on treaty change.”

While Cameron has pledged to hold a vote on Britain’s EU membership by the end of 2017 if he wins the election, he said he would “be delighted” to deliver it sooner if that were possible.

Asked if he could support an exit from the EU, he said: “If I don’t get what I want, I rule nothing out. Ruling nothing out means just that.”

Cameron, who is also trying to rebuff Labour allegations that his government’s policies benefit the richest most and have skewed job creation toward low-paid work, also emphasized his commitment to the state-funded NHS.

The NHS is “very precious to me, very precious to Britain,” said Cameron, adding that he does not believe the service to be “unaffordable.”