Opinion poll puts Brown's Labour one point behind

Previously sceptical British Labour Party backers are returning their support to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, an opinion poll showed yesterday, putting Labour almost level with its Conservative rival.

A ComRes opinion poll for the Independent newspaper put Labour support at 36 per cent, up five points on last month and catching up with David Cameron's Conservative Party, which lost two per cent from last month's poll to score 37 per cent support.

The gap between the two main parties is the narrowest in any poll since January when an Ipsos MORI poll put Labour one point ahead, the Independent said.

The Liberal Democrats, Britain's third largest political party, registered 17 per cent support, up one percentage point from the previous month.

The ComRes survey showed that voters in the lower-earning social groups had reacted warmly to the pre-budget measures Mr Brown's government announced last week - including a new 45 per cent top rate of tax for high earners and a small reduction in value added tax.

It also found that among voters who identified themselves as natural Labour supporters, 87 per cent said they would now vote for the party compared with 81 per cent last month.

Among Conservative "identifiers", the number of those intending to vote for Mr Cameron's party fell to 91 per cent from 95 per cent last month.