British PM gets poll boost after EU spat

LONDON, Dec 18 (AFP): British Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party has opened up a wider lead on the opposition in the wake of the stormy EU summit, a poll out Sunday showed. The ICM survey for The Sunday Telegraph newspaper put Cameron's centre-right Tories up two points since the summit on 40 percent-its highest score since the May 2010 general election. The opposition centre-left Labour Party was down two points at 34 per cent, while the centrist Liberal Democrats, the junior partners in Britain's coalition government, were unchanged on 14 per cent. A seat projection put the Conservatives at 322, four short of an overall majority, based on the current 650-seat lower House of Commons. Last week Britain and France engaged in a cross-Channel row after a dramatic European Union summit when Cameron refused to join members of the eurozone currency bloc in a new fiscal pact.