Premier Ewart Brown last night hit back at critics who have labelled him elitist — saying he cannot be because: "I was not raised that way."

The Premier also dismissed a poll showing only three out of ten voters had a favourable impression of him — saying that by his calculations the survey revealed more than half were probably in support.

And he said people are "coming after me" because, as a black man, they mistake his confidence for arrogance.

In front of about 100 people at a public meeting at Francis Patton Primary School, Dr. Brown also launched into another attack on the media, in particular The Royal Gazette.

Dr. Brown, who has been linked by many with efforts to set up a rival newspaper to this one, said Bermuda deserved a new daily paper which would "tell the truth".

British MPs who recently visited the Island — and whose recommendations included giving long-term residents the right to vote and outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation — also came under fire from the Premier, who claimed they had mainly listened to the biased views of the Opposition.

Works Minister Derrick Burgess, who kicked off procedures, said it was a Government meeting — but as Government's Royal Gazette ban continues, it had been advertised in this newspaper as a Progressive Labour Party meeting.

The elitism claims have mainly been played out in the Bermuda Sun, which recently ran a front page interview with Pembroke PLP MP Ashfield DeVent claiming the working poor are convinced they have been forgotten while Dr. Brown obsesses over glitzy parties and flash cars.

Responding last night, Dr. Brown said: "We won the General Election for the third time six months ago.

"If we were sufficiently in touch with the people to win an election in spite of a vicious journalistic assault on the party, we surely could not change in six months. That's too short.

"If by wanting the best for my people I'm elitist, I will take that. If by insisting that our people work hard and set an example for generations to come, I will accept that label.

"I can't be elitist because I was not raised that way. I'm the sixth in a long line of MPs, people who were elected, and I couldn't fail to learn lessons from them."

Dr. Brown said his efforts meant poor Bermudians are now able to benefit from treatment at the Lahey Clinic which previously only the rich could get.

He continued: "What happens when black men in particular are confident and have a few dollars? The confidence is called arrogance and the dollars are called elitism.

"You will never hear (former Opposition Leader) Grant Gibbons referred to as arrogant or elitist yet those labels might more accurately be applied to him.

"Yet they are coming after me. And if I was the Opposition I would come too."

On the Research.bm poll, which showed the Premier had an approval rating of 32 percent in June, Dr. Brown joked: "The first thing I thought was I'm ahead of Bush."

He said that 28 percent of people had an unfavourable opinion, meaning that only 60 percent of people either approved or disapproved of him.

Of the 40 percent whose opinion was somewhere in between, he said: "If the 40 is broken down in the same ratio as the 60, right, I get enough to be over 50 percent, which I think is fabulous for a person that's trying to change things."

On the 171-page report on the Overseas Territories by the UK's Foreign Affairs Committee, the Premier said: "Let's put it in perspective. These recommendations did not come from the UK government.

"They came from a group of people, I think five, who represent a committee and they go back and report their recommendations to the House of Commons. I don't know how much further it will go in their system.

"You will recall that they visited Bermuda almost immediately after the election.

"There were some people still hurting from the results of that election and they needed somebody to talk to. And when those people came from London they said: 'Oh yes, I have found someone to talk to.'

"I have taken an assessment of the list of people who spoke to this group and it reads like a list of members of the United Bermuda Party.

"Not everyone, but the vast majority of people were members of the United Bermuda Party, who simply talked about the same things they were saying during the election.

"For some reason, they believed that the people they were talking to represented a good cross section of Bermuda, but they were people who still to this day have not accepted the result of the election in 1998, the result of the election in 2003 and the result of the election in 2007."

He then said The Royal Gazette had become "more active than the Opposition".

He went on: "When you move away from being a newspaper that is simply biased, and you move from that to becoming a daily advocate of a political party, and daily destructor of the Government, you have changed your role.

"That's why I think this community deserves a daily newspaper that will not support any party, but will tell the truth."