BIRMINGHAM, United Kingdom: The leader of Britain’s main opposition Labour Party, Ed Miliband, who hopes to become prime minister on May 7, urged voters to choose hope over fear at a rally for activists Saturday.

Miliband is fighting Prime Minister David Cameron for the keys to Downing Street in a knife-edge race which commentators predict could result in another coalition or a minority government for Britain.

The centre-left party, which governed Britain from 1997 to 2010 under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, says it wants to share the profits of economic recovery more evenly across society and protect the state-run National Health Service (NHS).

“That is the choice at this election — the pessimists or the optimists, fear or hope, the few or the many, a failing Tory plan or a better plan for working families. Britain can do better than this,” Miliband said at Labour’s spring rally in Birmingham, central England, where he unveiled a pledge card of five key election vows.

“Today I urge the British people to choose optimism, to choose a country for the many, to choose our plan for working families, to decide to hope.”

His language seemed to echo that used by Barack Obama on the US campaign trail in 2008. Labour is being advised by David Axelrod, who helped orchestrate Obama’s rise to the White House.

Eight weeks before the election, Labour is on 32 per cent support compared to 33 per cent for Cameron’s Conservatives, the senior partners in Britain’s coalition government, according to a rolling average of opinion polls compiled by the UK Polling Report website.

Despite its campaign focus on the economy and the NHS, media coverage of Miliband often focuses on his awkward public persona.

In the latest surreal incident, newspapers this week focused on how many kitchens he has in his north London home after he was pictured in a small, sparse room drinking a cup of tea with his wife.

It later emerged that he had a second, larger kitchen, prompting commentators to debate whether this meant he was out of touch with ordinary voters.

— AFP