British Prime Minister Tony Blair hit election arch-rival Michael Howard where it hurt Friday, blasting the Conservative leader's pet policy on asylum and immigration.
Describing Howard's pledges to slap a quota on foreign workers as "a load of nonsense", Blair set out his governing Labour Party's proposals to curb asylum seekers while at the same time cultivating a skilled migrant workforce.
Immigration and asylum have emerged as key issues in the election race as all three parties wrestle to win votes on polling day, May 5, with the Conservatives in particular scoring points thanks to their hardline approach.
"Concern over asylum and immigration is not about racism. It is about fairness," Blair said in a speech in Dover, southern England, one of the main gateways into Britain for asylum-seekers.
"But I never want this to be an issue that divides our country that sets communities against each other," he said.
"It is the duty of government to deal with the issues of both asylum and immigration. But they should not be exploited by a politics that in desperation seeks refuge in them," said Blair in a veiled attack on Howard's headline-grabbing promotion of the immigration issue.
Blair promised to detain more failed asylum-seekers if re-elected for a record third successive term in government and pledged to use electronic tagging to keep track of others. He also said Labour would finally introduce identity cards.
"We will put in place strict controls that work they will be part of our first legislative programme if we are re-elected on May 5," said Blair.
Turning to the Conservative Party's proposals on immigration and asylum -- which have formed a central pillar of its election campaign -- Blair said they were unworkable and unaccountable.
"The Tory party have gone from being a one-nation party to being a one-issue party in this campaign," he said.
On top of promising a limit on immigrants and asylum-seekers, Howard has vowed to withdraw Britain from the Geneva Convention on refugees -- a policy that Blair said would leave the country isolated on the international stage.
"It's not bad enough that they are running the type of campaign they are running but on the one issue they are running the campaign they don't even have a policy that remotely adds up to anything other than a load of nonsense designed to make wholly contradictory claims add up," he said.
Under a Labour government, the number of applications for asylum has fallen from a peak of 8,000 per month in 2002 to just over 2,000 per month now.
In addition, 122,500 failed asylum seekers were deported in 2004 compared with about 5,000 in 1996 when the Conservatives were in power, according to Blair.
The Conservative Party has brushed such statistics aside.
Its home affairs spokesman, David Davis, earlier described Britain's asylum and immigration system as a "shambles" and in "chaos".
"Eight years in, (the government has) suddenly woken up to the issue and it's only because over the last year we have demonstrated the sheer shambles and chaos the system is in," he told the BBC.