UK parliament dissolves ahead of election

LONDON // British prime minister David Cameron paid a courtesy call on Queen Elizabeth II, then launched an attack on his main political rival, as campaigning formally began on Monday in the most unpredictable UK election in decades.

The royal audience – possibly Mr Cameron’s last as prime minister – came as Britain’s parliament was officially dissolved ahead of the May 7 vote.

After seeing the queen, Mr Cameron made a brief televised statement in front of his Downing Street office, saying Britons face a “stark choice” in the next election.

“The next prime minister walking through that door will be me or Ed Miliband,” Mr Cameron said. “Ed Miliband pays lip service to working people while planning to hike taxes and increase debt.”

Polls, bookmakers and politics-watchers say the election is too close to call, and no party is expected to win a majority of seats in the House of Commons.

Some form of coalition government is likely, and smaller parties – such as the Scottish and Welsh nationalists, the Greens and the anti-Europeans – could hold the balance of power.

While issues such as the European Union and immigration will play a big role in the campaign, both Mr Cameron’s Conservatives and their main opposition, the Labour Party, are focusing their pitches on the economy.

Mr Cameron said a Labour victory would bring “economic chaos” and threaten Britain’s recovery from the Great Recession.

“Debt will rise and jobs will be lost as a result,” he said.

Mr Cameron said that when he took office in 2010, “Britain was on the brink”.

Now, he said, “Britain is back on her feet again”, and growing faster than other G-7 economies.

But Labour leader Ed Miliband argued that for many voters, that recovery “feels like it’s happening to someone else, somewhere else”.

He kicked off campaigning with a speech aimed at reassuring business that Labour will not increase tax and red tape.

And he called the Conservatives’ vow to hold a referendum on whether Britain should leave the 28-nation EU a “clear and present danger” to British businesses.

Mr Cameron’s visit to the palace was a courtesy, since this election ends the historic practice of prime ministers asking the monarch to dissolve parliament.

That is now done automatically. The same law fixes election dates to the first Thursday in May every five years unless the government loses a confidence vote in parliament.

* Associated Press and Bloomberg