(Bloomberg) -- Gordon Brown is on course to lead a minority U.K. administration after this year's election, according to a survey giving the opposition Conservative Party its smallest lead over Labour in more than two years.A YouGov Plc poll gave the Conservatives the support of 37 percent of voters, down two percentage points, and Labour the backing of 35 percent, up two. The uneven distribution of votes across districts means this would leave the incumbent Labour Party with the most seats, about nine short of a Parliamentary majority, said the Sunday Times, which published the poll.
Addressing a party conference today in Brighton, on England's south coast, Conservative leader David Cameron will speak without notes in an echo of his 2007 conference speech, given two days before Brown backed away from plans for an early election. Last week, the prime minister, who has trailed in the polls ever since that decision, urged voters to "take a second look at us, and take a long, hard look at them."
"They've doubled the national debt, hit people with more than one hundred tax rises, sent our troops to war without the right equipment," Cameron wrote in an article in today's News of the World newspaper. "We've had our second look, prime minister -- and you don't deserve a second chance."
Brown can choose when to call the election, which must be held by June 3. The poll is the latest in a series over the past month showing the Conservative lead over Brown's Labour narrowing from about 10 percentage points, where it had stayed for most of the last year.