Mr Tony Blair and Mr William Hague clashed bitterly over the euro yesterday in their final Commons confrontation before the general election on June 7th.
The first full day of campaigning also saw Mr Gordon Brown and Mr Michael Portillo clash over taxes and the economy.
And the alleged rivalry between Mr Brown and the Prime Minister was back in the news as Mr Blair denied ever striking a deal to stand down and allow his Chancellor to take his place.
But the day was dominated by those angry clashes between Mr Hague and Mr Blair over the single currency and a farewell speech by the retiring "Father of the House", Sir Edward Heath, who stunned Tory MPs with the assertion that "a united Europe is here to stay".
The Conservative benches cheered Mr Hague's barn-storming assault on Mr Blair, telling him: "Come clean, be straight and admit you want to ditch the pound as soon as possible."
Mr Blair told MPs the government's position was clear and remained the same: "In principle we are in favour of joining, in practice the economic conditions have to be met. And we will give the final say to the British people in a referendum."
But Mr Hague charged that the "central deception" of the last election was Mr Blair's "worthless vow" that he "loved the pound" and understood the emotions people felt when they saw the Queen's head on the currency. The "central deception" in this election, he continued, was Mr Blair's pretence that he would hand the choice to the people while "planning to bounce them into the euro".
Mr Blair hit back hard, dismissing as "fatuous" Mr Hague's decision to rule out membership of the single currency for the lifetime of the next parliament. "Perhaps you could explain how you can be against the single currency, in principle, but only for five years," he demanded.
Mr Blair said the Tory stance threatened Britain "with a choice between humiliation or exit from Europe." But Mr Hague retorted that Mr Blair was the only party leader in the House who had ever campaigned for withdrawal from Europe - a barbed reference to Labour's 1983 election manifesto and Mr Blair's personal manifesto in the same campaign.
Mr Hague recalled that two weeks before the 1997 contest a newspaper article reported: "Tony Blair last night declared for the first time that he loved the pound. He said: `I know exactly what the British people feel when they see the Queen's head on a £10 note. I feel it, too. These are emotional issues involved in the single currency. It's about the sovereignty of Britain'."
And the Tory leader jeered: "Wasn't your emotional exploitation of the Queen's head before the last election just like your emotional exploitation of schoolchildren at this election?"
However, very different emotions were surging on the Tory benches a short while later as the former Tory prime minister, Sir Edward, made his farewell to the House, of which he had been a member for 51 years. Mr Hague and then Mr Blair had congratulated Sir Edward and the other retiring veteran, Mr Tony Benn. Labour and Liberal Democrats broke into applause after Sir Edward's declaration that he looked forward to campaigning "vigorously" in a referendum on the euro. The hands of Tory MPs remained firmly in their laps.
In his good-humoured tribute Mr Hague had suggested Mr Benn would be rather more missed on the Tory benches. Mr Benn replied in kind, thanking Mr Blair for all he had done over the past four years, "and the leader of the Opposition for all he has done to help".
PA adds: Shadow Chancellor Michael Portillo yesterday said an Institute of Fiscal Studies report was proof that there is a "£10 billion black hole" in Labour's spending plans.
The report stated that, to maintain public spending growth, taxes would have to be raised by some £5 billion a year.