The Liberal Democrat leader has played down polls predicting his party will finish fourth in Thursday's European elections.

Charles Kennedy was speaking after a YouGov survey for Monday's Telegraph put the UK Independence Party in third place at the expense of the Lib Dems with just four days to go and hundreds of thousands of postal votes already cast.

The poll had Labour in the lead on 26 per cent, with the Conservatives on 24 per cent and UKIP on 19 per cent.

It left the Lib Dems in fourth on 15 per cent, which if accurate would embarrass the party that was expecting to cash in on anger at the Iraq war.

However Kennedy said polls should not be taken to mean the party has not made progress under his leadership.

"They still show us under the European parliamentary elections coming in on or about the level of support that we had last time - probably higher and therefore probably more Euro MPs as a result," he told the BBC.

"That, as compared with the position of my opposite numbers in Labour and the Conservatives, is a good position to be in.

"The outcome of a European parliamentary election doesn't always provide the most valuable guide or reliable guide to what will happen in the subsequent general election," he added.