Ok, if you're a Brit, who will you be voting for?Brown to call election for 6 May
Prime Minister Gordon Brown is preparing to announce that the general election will be held on 6 May.
Following a cabinet meeting, he will go to Buckingham Palace to ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament.
On returning from the Palace he will confirm the widely-predicted date and call the election "the big choice".
Conservative leader David Cameron said his party had the "big ideas" for the country while Lib Dem Nick Clegg said only his party offered "real change".
The economy, taxation and public services will be key battlegrounds.
TV debates
The campaign will also feature, for the first time, live television debates between the three main party leaders.
It will be the first time that Mr Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg have led their respective parties into a general election - none were party leaders at the last one in 2005.
On returning from the Palace, Mr Brown is expected to announce the date surrounded by his entire cabinet, the BBC's political editor Nick Robinson said.
“ We are in for most unpredictable, most dramatic and most exciting election in many years - I can't wait ”
Nick Robinson
Mr Brown is expected to say in a speech: "The people have fought too hard to get Britain on the road to recovery to allow anybody to take us back to the road to recession."
He will outline "three big challenges" facing the country - securing the recovery, protecting front-line services whilst halving the deficit, and renewing politics.
At about the same time, Mr Cameron will make a speech in which he is expected to say the Tories are fighting for "the great ignored".
"We're fighting this election for the great ignored - young, old, rich, poor, black, white, gay, straight.
"They start businesses, operate factories, teach our children, clean the streets, grow our food and keep us healthy - keep us safe. They work hard, pay their taxes, obey the law," he will say.
Iraq invasion
Meanwhile in an address to party workers, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg is expected to say the announcement marks the "beginning of the end for Gordon Brown", claiming he is "directly and personally responsible for the biggest mistakes of the last 13 years".
He is expected to highlight the banking crash and recession, the "illegal invasion of Iraq", the "corruption and rottenness in our politics" and claim Britain has become more unfair under Labour.
ANALYSIS
Ross Hawkins BBC political correspondent
Much of the substantial discussion in the coming weeks will centre on policies for taxing the public, and spending their money.
Recent debate has centred on the government's plan to put up National Insurance next year, and the Conservative policy of blocking much of the rise.
Journalists will press politicians for more detail on whether their sums add up, and where spending cuts will come.
These debates will be picked over in huge detail. Few will have the time to follow every twist. But at the heart of each one will be the fight to appear credible on the economy.
The whole cabinet will start campaigning immediately and the shadow cabinet is also poised to fan out across the country as soon as the election is called.
Speaking on Tuesday morning, Mr Cameron said he would be explaining to voters around the country they had a "big choice" and only the Conservatives had the "energy, the leadership, the values to get things done in our country".
Mr Clegg told reporters it was not a "two horse race" between the two biggest parties and people were "crying out for something different".
"All bets are off," he said.
"I'm really looking forward to being able to put the case for real change, real fairness, to people."
But in an interview with the Daily Mirror, the prime minister urged the public to stick with him to see the job through.
"This is an election not about small issues - it is the big choice. We have come so far in taking Britain out of recession... do we throw this away now?"
The three main parties - along with a host of other smaller parties - will be fighting for 650 seats, four more than currently exist because of constituency boundary changes.
To secure an overall majority, a party must win at least 326. If no party succeeds in doing so, the result will be a hung Parliament.
After 13 years in power, Labour enters the election with a notional majority of 48 seats, meaning that a loss of 24 seats would see them lose their overall majority.
Whatever the result, the make-up of the House of Commons will change significantly following the election, with 144 MPs so far having announced that they will stand down.
Opinion polls timed to coincide with the announcement all suggest a Conservative lead over Labour, by differing margins.
An ICM survey for the Guardian indicates the Tory lead has dropped to just four points, with the Conservatives on 37%, Labour on 33% and the Lib Dems on 21%.
However a YouGov poll in the Sun and another by Opinium for the Daily Express suggest the Tories have opened up a 10% lead - the margin David Cameron is likely to need in order to win an outright majority on 6 May. The Sun has the Tories on 41%, Labour on 31% and the Lib Dems on 18%. The Express reports a 39/29/17 split.
The economy will be the focus of much of the campaign and of one of the live leadership debates to be held during the election campaign on the BBC, Sky and ITV.
On Monday Mr Brown said Tory plans, in particular to reverse Labour's planned National Insurance rise, were a risk the UK "can't afford" and could send the country into a "double-dip recession".
The Conservatives say the planned National Insurance rise would lead to job losses and argue that by making £6bn of government efficiency savings this financial year they would not have to implement most of the policy.
The Liberal Democrats have set out plans for £15bn of public spending cuts, a "mansion tax" on properties worth more than £2m and an end to income tax on the first £10,000 of earnings.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/u ... 603591.stm
Published: 2010/04/06 08:23:45 GMT
If your not a Brit, who would you vote for if you were?
