David Cameron Pledges to Expand Margaret Thatcher's Home-Buying Scheme to Woo Voters

London:

British Prime Minister David Cameron will use the launch of his party's policy manifesto on Tuesday to woo voters with a "Conservative dream" that would allow more than 1 million poorer families to buy their own homes at a discount.

If re-elected on May 7, Cameron will promise his party would extend a flagship "right-to-buy" scheme, first introduced by former Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher, that would allow people living in social housing to cheaply purchase their homes.

The original scheme helped boost Thatcher's political fortunes - she notched up three election victories - and Cameron hopes it will allow him to broaden the central economic message of his campaign and bring it to life for voters.

Designed to court working class voters who have abandoned his party for the anti-EU UK Independence party (UKIP) and wavering supporters of the opposition Labour Party, the pledge represents a shift towards a more positive campaign.

With just over three weeks before what is shaping up to be Britain's closest election since the 1970s, Cameron is under pressure to put clear water between his party and Labour in opinion polls, most of which have the two neck-and-neck.

One poll conducted on the eve of the manifesto launch gave the Conservatives a six-point lead over Labour, boosting party morale. But the overall trend still points to a dead heat.

At stake is more than simply who will govern the $2.8 trillion economy: Cameron has promised a referendum on European Union membership while Scottish nationalists, who want Scotland's independence, are seeking a kingmaker role.

"At the heart of this manifesto is a simple proposition," Cameron is expected to say, according to advance extracts. "We are the party of working people, offering you security at every stage of your life."

Strategy shift

Under the expanded right-to-buy scheme 1.3 families living in nonprofit housing associations would be granted the right to buy their properties at a heavy discount. For each home sold, a new one would have to be built.

He is also expected to pledge to ensure that more low-paid workers will no longer have to pay taxes.

The alumnus of Britain's elite Eton college, Labour often charge that Cameron's privileged background means he's out of touch. Going after working class votes is a way of countering that.

Cameron's gambit follows Labour manifesto launch on Monday in which Labour leader Ed Miliband tried to overturn a damaging perception his party could not be trusted on the economy.

Some Cameron allies have fretted that the central message of the Conservative campaign so far - that the centre-right party need another term to complete the economic recovery it has nurtured - has been too abstract to connect with voters.

Cameron's campaign narrative casts his party as the defenders of a strong economic recovery pitched against the "chaos and incompetence" of Labour who left Britain in 2010 with its biggest peacetime deficit since World War Two.

Party strategists had hoped that the economic argument coupled with what they saw as the unusually weak leadership qualities of Labour's Miliband would have put the Conservatives in a commanding opinion poll lead by now.

Instead, the Conservatives find themselves under mounting pressure to do or say something different to break the poll deadlock which shows no one party is on track to win outright, teeing up the prospect of a coalition or a minority government.