PM Brown fights on as media tips rivals in UK vote

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said 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 center-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 center-left Labour either while the traditionally pro-Labour Mirror tabloid relegated its election coverage to page eight.

"The Guardian's gone, and my paper, the Independent is more or less veering toward either, 'We support a hung parliament' or 'Let's give the Lib Dems more of a chunk of power'," columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown told Sky News. "So they have no one. And this is extraordinary for the Labour party."

POLITICAL BALANCE

Still, several factors may yet alter the political balance in the last leg of the tightest British election in decades.

"We are up for the fight ... I do not think we are losing. The contest is still wide open. There are many who have not yet made up their minds," Labour Business Secretary Peter Mandelson told BBC news on a campaign walkabout.

Analysts will be looking out for another gaffe, as well as more detail on how the parties hope to cut Britain's record budget deficit, currently running at more than 11 percent of GDP and the main election campaign issue.

Politicians have been reluctant to scare voters by outlining the extent of deep spending cuts expected whichever party wins.

Labour and the Lib Dems say that cuts should be delayed to give a tentative economic recovery time to take root, but the Conservatives want to slash spending soon after taking power.

Clegg told Reuters in an interview on Friday that the main parties should work together to devise a plan to tackle the deficit.

His centrist party's support could be pivotal in the case of a hung parliament, but he refused to be drawn on whether the Lib Dems would support Labour or the Conservatives, saying he will be guided by the election's outcome.

He has publicly rejected working with Brown, and in an interview in Saturday's Guardian newspaper said there was a "Gulf in values" between himself and Cameron, whom he now sees as his main competitor, dismissing Brown.

(Editing by Lin Noueihed)