Brown cuts opposition opinion poll lead

Prime Minister Gordon Brown leaves 10 Downing Street to attend the weekly Prime Minister's Questions session in the House of Commons, March 11, 2009.

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown cut the Conservatives' opinion poll lead by 10 points over the weekend when his government hosted a G20 finance ministers' meeting, according to the latest survey on Tuesday.

The Ipsos MORI poll put the Labour Party on 32 percent, four percentage points up on last month, with the Conservatives down six points on 42 percent.

Brown, who must hold an election by June 2010, appears to have made some headway in convincing voters that his plans to lift Britain out of recession and fix the economy will work.

Optimism over the fate of the economy in the next year reached its highest level in 18 months, although more than half (52 percent) still think it will worsen.

Twenty-three percent of those polled thought the economy would improve and the same number said it would stay the same.

Pollsters questioned more than 1,000 people by telephone between Friday and Sunday when G20 finance ministers were meeting south of London to discuss the global economic crisis.

Although Brown's approval ratings were better than last month, they still made bleak reading for Labour.

Just over a third of those polled said they were satisfied with the prime minister, while 59 percent were not satisfied, giving him an approval rating of minus 25.

Two-thirds said they were dissatisfied with Brown's government. Conservative leader David Cameron matched his highest-ever approval rating in the Ipsos MORI poll. He had a rating of plus 22, with 52 percent satisfied and 30 percent dissatisfied.

(Reporting by Peter Griffiths, editing by Kate Kelland)