London, April 15: With his popularity sliding in opinion polls, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has presented a new "golden rule" to Britain that he said reflects Sikh values.

Hitting the campaign trail for the May 1 London mayoral election, Brown joined Mayor Ken Livingstone on Monday at an east London gurdwara for Baisakhi celebrations.

There he set out a new "golden rule" as he praised the Sikh community for its "values of tolerance, of equality, of justice, of treating people with fairness, values that uphold our religious and spiritual views."

"Treating others as you would like to be treated yourself is a rule that I believe has got relevance to every community in this country, building tolerance, building justice, building equality and building fairness," he told Sikhs at the Gurdwara Singh Sabha in Ilford, Essex.

Brown, who started by wishing everybody a Happy New Year in Punjabi, spoke after a tour of the gurdwara.

Both he and Livingstone were presented, along with local MP Mike Gapes, with an orange robe of honour by the gurdwara president.

With Brown facing intense pressure over the economy, success for his Labour Party colleague Livingstone is widely seen as a key test of his leadership.

Livingstone said: "I don't expect there to be a recession in this city and that partly reflects the fact that we have rebalanced the London economy.

"There is so much investment now from China, from India, from Russia, from around the world and these economies are still going strongly."

Livingstone - bidding for an unprecedented third term as mayor - faces stiff competition from Conservative Party candidate Boris Johnson.

An Ipsos MORI poll for the Observer on Sunday put the Tories on 51 percent and Labour on 49 percent.

EMAIL THIS NEWS COMMENTS No comments yet