British PM Cameron's Conservatives take poll lead ahead of election

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative party has edged ahead of the opposition Labour party just over seven months ahead of a May 2015 national election, a YouGov poll showed on Friday. When asked which party they would vote for, 35 percent of respondents said they would vote Conservative while 34 percent said they would vote for Labour, according to a YouGov survey carried out on Oct. 1-2. YouGov said it was the first poll lead for the Conservatives since March 2012 but cautioned that a single poll should be treated with care as it had also detected small Labour leads in recent weeks. The Liberal Democrats, the junior members of the coalition government, were on 6 percent while the anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party was on 14 percent, when excluding nearly a fifth of respondents who said they either would not vote or did not know who to vote for. YouGov also said the lead could be due to Cameron's Oct. 1 speech when he pledged over 7 billion pounds of tax cuts. "The poll may be a blip, reflecting a real but short-lived boost for the Tories following their party's annual conference and David Cameron's well-received speech," YouGov President Peter Kellner said. (Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Alison Williams)