British Prime Minister Gordon Brown qouted by Reuters as saying on Saturday he paid a heavy price for calling a Labour supporter "bigoted" as negative media coverage pointed increasingly to his Labour party losing power after 13 years. With only five days to go until the May 6 election, his main rival, the Conservative Party has pulled ahead in the opinion polls, but not by enough to win an outright majority. That raises the prospect of a so-called hung parliament in which no party has an overall majority -- an outcome not witnessed since 1974 and which markets worry will hamper decision-making at a critical time for the economy. In another blow to Brown, two newspapers turned against him on Saturday, including a leading left-leaning daily, but the prime minister said his party was still fighting to win. "Never. Never. I'm fighting this to the last second of this election. I'm a fighter. I've had to fight for everything I've got," Brown said in an interview published in Saturday's edition of the Telegraph newspaper. Brown admitted he had paid a "very heavy" price for his gaffe on Wednesday, when he was unwittingly recorded calling a traditional Labour voter a "bigoted woman" after she questioned his party's policy on immigration. A day later, Conservative leader David Cameron was widely judged to have won the last of three U.S.-style televised debates, putting wind in the sails of his centre-right party, which has long led in opinion polls. On Saturday, The Times switched its support to the Conservatives and the once-loyal Guardian is now backing Britain's third-largest party the Liberal Democrats, or Lib Dems. Another leading newspaper, the left-leaning Independent, wasn't likely to support centre-left Labour either while the traditionally pro-Labour Mirror tabloid relegated its election coverage to page eight. -- SPA
