Brown opens up the gap in leaders battle

Gordon Brown with his wife Sarah

The Prime Minister has widened the gap over Conservative leader Cameron in Scotland in the past month – from nine to 12 percentage points since February – despite the looming public spending cuts and the lack of populist policies in the Chancellor's Budget last week.

The YouGov poll of 1,008 Scots has also delivered some bad news for First Minister Alex Salmond, with the public failing to back his election slogan of "More Nats, Less Cuts".

In the poll, taken after Alistair Darling's Budget, almost half (45 per cent) disagreed with the election slogan, which is based on the idea that the more SNP MPs there are at Westminster, the more clout they will have to fight for Scottish interests in a hung parliament. Only one-quarter (25 per cent) agreed.

Another boost to the Prime Minister came in the proportion of people intending to vote for Labour at the general election rising to 37 per cent, compared with the 35 per cent recorded by a Scotland on Sunday YouGov poll in February.

The increase in Labour support was accompanied by a fall in Conservative backing north of the Border from 20 per cent to 18 per cent.

Meanwhile, the poll revealed the Nationalists remained stable at 24 per cent, while the Lib Dems fell from 15 per cent to 14 per cent.

The fillip for Labour came after Brown rallied his Scottish troops at a one-day conference at the Glasgow Science Centre yesterday.

The Prime Minister promised to make his government properly accountable to voters as he set out Labour's plans to rebuild the economy and overcome the cynicism and lack of trust surrounding politicians.

The Scotland on Sunday poll findings were welcomed by Labour.

Jim Murphy, the Secretary of State for Scotland, said the poll revealed Brown's growing popularity among voters, compared with the Tory leader. "David Cameron's mask is starting to slip and people are not liking what they see," he said.

"The airbrushed image doesn't fool anyone. The Tories haven't changed, they are the same old party that will wreak havoc on public services and risk the recovery."

The Conservatives attempted to shrug off the poll's findings, with David Mundell, the shadow Scottish secretary, saying: "In our 11 target seats across Scotland, our polling shows us poised to make gains in every corner of the country."

The relative popularity of Brown and Cameron as individuals will prove crucial in a campaign that will be dominated by presidential-style television debates.

In the poll, Brown's popularity rating increased from six percentage points to eight in the last month, whereas Cameron's rating has fallen from minus three to minus four.

Popularity ratings are calculated by subtracting the percentage of people who believe that a leader is doing a bad job from those who believe he or she is doing a good job.

The SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson said his party had "substantially" increased its vote since the 2005 election when it polled 18 per cent.

"Our 'More Nats, Less Cuts' slogan has only just begun and already, within just a matter of days, a quarter of Scots back it," Robertson said.