Brown will take UK back to 70s: Tories

He will say left-wingers are once again taking over Labour,which won three elections as a centrist party under Tony Blair,who has now been succeeded as prime minister by Gordon Brown.

“If our opponents’ mistaken arguments and mistaken principles prevailed,Britain will move backwards towards a ’70s style model,with a bigger say for the trade unions who want to impose rigidity and unaffordable regulation across the public and private sector,” Hague will say in a speech to the Royal United Services Institute,a defence think tank.

Hague’s fierce attack on Labour comes as opinion polls point to a shrinking of the centre-right Conservatives’ once double-digit lead. Many polls now point to a hung parliament,in which no party will have an overall majority.

“The bridge will be drawn up against innovation and investment,” he says in advance excerpts released by his office.

“Five more years of Gordon Brown would mean that this country would be associated across the world with risky and unaffordable debt,lack of discipline over spending and trade union power,” he says.

Brown’s government has spent billions of pounds trying to boost the recession-hit economy,leaving the country on track for a 178 billion pound deficit this year.

The Conservatives want urgent action to cut the deficit,warning that if it does not act,Britain risks a crisis of investor confidence.

Labour,while pledging to halve the deficit in four years,says cutting government spending too soon could sabotage the hesitant recovery that began in the final quarter of 2009.

Britain suffered high inflation,soaring unemployment and bitter strikes during the 1970s when it was known as the “sick man of Europe.” In 1976,it was forced to seek help from the International Monetary Fund in a move that destroyed the Labour Party’s economic reputation for a generation.

The so-called “winter of discontent” of 1978/79 when public sector strikes left rubbish piling up on streets helped propel Margaret Thatcher into office in the 1979 election,ushering in 18 years of Conservative rule.

After overcoming years of voter distrust,Labour built a reputation for sound management of the economy during Brown’s decade as finance minister up to 2007. But that reputation was dealt a heavy blow by the financial crisis.