Tony Blair tried today to take on the Tories on the single issue where opinion polls put the opposition significantly ahead - immigration.

In Dover, the prime minister promised another 600 border guards, an Australian-type points system to filter applicants for entry into the UK, and rounded on the Tories for basing their campaign around "one issue".

He said: "Their campaign is based on the statement that it isn’t racist to talk about immigration. I know of no senior politician who has ever said it was.

"So why do they put it like that? It is an attempt deliberately to exploit people’s fears, to suggest that for reasons of political correctness, those in power don’t dare deal with the issue - so that the public is left with the impression that they are being silenced in their concerns, that we are blindly ignoring them or telling them that to raise the issue is racist, when actually the opposite is true."

A survey for The Independent seems to suggest that Tory candidates are certainly playing up the issue, while the paper also reports that the British National Party is fielding four times as many candidates next month - a total of 118 - than it did at the 2001 election.


On the day when data indicate that the UK economy slowed in the first quarter, leading analysts to predict that tax rises would likely be inevitable, regardless of which party won the election, Michael Howard said he was unable to rule out tax rises at some point in the future.

He told Jeremy Paxman: "...if you're asking me what I'll be able to do three or four years out, then in truth, although we've spelled out our plans, although our plans don't need us to increase taxes at all, I can't foresee exactly what the position is going to be in three or four years time. There may be unforeseen events."