Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne tour the Heysham to M6 link road motorway construction site near Morecambe during campaigning in northern England yesterday.

Agencies/London

David Cameron has accidentally described the May 7 election as “career-defining” when he meant “country-defining”, his third gaffe of recent days.
His mistake yesterday was immediately jumped on by his opponents as unintentionally revealing that he was more concerned about his own job prospects than the future of the UK.
It is likely that the prime minister will step down as Tory leader if the electorate vote him out of Downing Street.
“This is a real career-defining … country-defining election that we face in less than a week’s time,” he told an audience at the headquarters of Asda in Leeds.
Over the past week, Cameron has also gotten the name of his football team wrong, saying West Ham instead of Aston Villa, and has forgotten the date of the general election - saying May 9 instead of May 7.
His premiership has been remarkably gaffe-free, with the notable exception of allowing a television camera to pick up him telling the former New York mayor that the Queen “purred” down the line to him about the outcome of the Scottish referendum.
Cameron’s flurry of recent verbal slips might indicate that the strains of the election campaign and his heavy tour schedule are beginning to show.
Labour immediately mocked yesterday’s slip, tweeting: “It’s all about Dave”.
Jon Ashworth, a shadow cabinet office minister, added: “The problem with David Cameron is he always gets his priorities wrong. He puts his career before country, just as he puts a privileged few before working people.”
This week, the comedian Russell Brand, who interviewed the Labour leader, Ed Miliband tweeted: “CEOs like Cameron are what make Britain a great company, I mean country.”
Meanwhile, a snap Guardian/ICM poll showed Prime Minister David Cameron had won the last major TV contest of the election campaign, with 44% of viewers saying he had performed best on the night.
Cameron was subjected to 30 minutes of questions from a BBC TV audience. Labour leader Ed Miliband and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg were then - in turn - questioned by the same audience.
The poll, which surveyed 1,288 adults after they had watched the programme, said Miliband came second, with 38%, and Clegg third with 19%.
There were no major gaffes, but Miliband briefly lost his footing and stumbled off the stage, something his critics in the country’s mostly right-leaning press seized on with glee.
Thursday’s event, which took place in Leeds, saw all three party leaders subjected to robust questioning, with audience members sometimes accusing them of lying and abusing their trust.
Cameron, up first, came under repeated pressure to explain how he would find cuts to the country’s welfare budget worth £12bn and was asked why some Britons were reduced to using food banks.
He did not offer new detail on where he might find budget cuts, but said job creation would help reduce the need for cuts.  “I am not saying everything is perfect, I’m saying we have not finished the work. That is why I am so keen to do another five years,” he said.
Miliband came under pressure on Labour’s spending record when it was in office from 1997-10. He said he did not think Labour had overspent in government despite leaving behind the country’s biggest deficit since World War II.
Miliband used the event to say he’d rather stay in opposition than do a deal with Scottish nationalists, who have been urging him to consider an arrangement to lock Cameron out of power.
Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), said she was appalled by his comments.
“He sounded as if he was saying that he would rather see Cameron and the Conservatives back in government than actually work with the SNP,” she told a televised audience on a separate programme afterwards.
“If he means that then I don’t think people in Scotland will ever forgive Labour for allowing the Conservatives to get back into office.”