The Conservative Party will continue its election push with more hard-hitting and blunt campaigning, party chairman Michael Ancram has claimed.

Following the Conservatives' controversial election broadcast on Labour's early release scheme for prisoners, he rejected claims that his party had been guilty of negative campaigning.

Ancram said: "We've had a very positive reaction on the ground with people saying to us that it was about time somebody showed up the early release scheme for the failure that it's been...it was a perfectly legitimate target for our comment".

In an exclusive interview with ePolitix.com, Ancram added: "We are going to be very hard hitting and we're going to be talking in blunt terms about those issues that concern people. It was noticeable that the Labour Party were relying in their broadcast on a whole series of celebrities saying that they liked Labour. That's not what politics is about, it's not what elections are about - it's about real issues that affect real people."

The public are also getting increasingly angry at Labour's attempts to stage manage their campaign, claimed Ancram.

"There's certainly increasing anger among the voters of what they perceive to be an attempt by the Labour Party to run a campaign which is kept away from the public and which doesn't reflect reality on the ground...the reality is a deteriorating health service which is causing problems and there is genuine anger about the government's failure to realise that their rhetoric is very different from the reality," he said.

Ancram also dismissed the continuing run of opinion polls showing the Conservatives trailing Labour, saying that the only poll to matter would be held on election day.

"One of the most significant factors we're finding in this election is the number of people who will vote but who have genuinely not yet made up their minds. And those people obviously don't show in the opinion polls so the opinion polls may reflect a certain proportion of the electorate but they don't necessarily reflect the position that will be in place at the end," said Ancram.

Turning to the issue of Europe, Ancram said the Conservatives have always had members whose views are not in line with party policy. "The obvious example of that is Kenneth Clarke," he said.

"What is important to us is that the vast majority of our candidates accept the party line which has been endorsed by the party membership, and on which we fought and won the European elections two years ago. Our policy is to be in Europe, not run by Europe, and to keep the Pound," said Ancram.