British Prime Minister Gordon Brown this afternoon reached out to Britain's "mainstream majority" and promised to clean up politics and get tough on crime to try to prevent a crushing election defeat next year.
His speech to the Labour Party conference in Brighton sought to win back disaffected middle class voters who turned left under Tony Blair.
Mr Brown said Labour had been right to pump billions of pounds into the economy to combat the recession and said he would make a legally binding commitment to cut the record budget deficit in half over the next four years.
He stressed the virtues of "fairness and responsibility" and said the government would get tough on the bonus culture at banks that so many blame for the financial crisis. "Call them middle-class values, call them traditional working class values, call them family values, call them all of these; these are the values of the mainstream majority," he said.
In what is likely to be seen as an opening to the Liberal Democrats who could hold the balance of power in the next election if there is a hung parliament, Brown said Labour would offer a referendum commitment to a vote on amending Britain's first-past-the-post voting system early in the next parliament.
He also said voters would be able to oust MPs found to have broken rules on corruption.
Mr Brown argued his decisions have taken the sting out of the worst recession in decades and put Britain on track to economic recovery.
He tried to assuage voter anger over the expenses scandal that damaged all of Britain's main political parties and countered opposition charges that society is falling apart, with measures to tackle youth crime and binge drinking.
"We will never allow teenage tearaways or anybody else to turn our town centres into no-go areas at night times."
Support for the 58-year-old has melted away in the last year when Brown has been hurt by a scandal over politicians' expenses, rising unemployment and a perception that he is a ditherer.
The latest opinion poll put Labour down in third place for the first time since 1982, pollster Ipsos Mori said.
The survey put the Conservatives on 36 per cent, the Liberal Democrats on 25 percent and Labour on 24 percent.