BRITAIN:Tony Blair and Gordon Brown finally appear to be pulling together ahead of Thursday's elections threatening historic defeat for Labour in Scotland, coalition government in Wales and the loss of hundreds of council seats in England.
The latest and biggest opinion survey from the Scottish campaign gives the Scottish National Party (SNP) an eight-point lead over Labour in the constituency vote. The sense of power slipping away from Labour was heightened at the weekend when Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Nicol Stephen confirmed he would first open coalition talks with Alex Salmond, assuming the SNP emerges as the largest party in Holyrood.
But as the battle for Scottish votes intensified yesterday, Labour seized on an assertion by SNP leader Alex Salmond that independence was "not a one-way street" and that an independent Scotland could subsequently re-join the United Kingdom if it wished.
Mr Blair described the SNP's position as "absurd", while outgoing Scottish First Minister Jack McConnell said: "The future of Scotland is too important for anyone to seriously believe we can adopt this hokey-cokey, in-out, shake-it-all-about attitude towards our constitution."
Mr McConnell continued: "Alex Salmond will bring nothing but cost, constitutional conflict and chaos to the Scottish Parliament."
Analysis by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher of Plymouth University's elections centre, meanwhile, suggests Labour is heading for its worst local government performance in more than 50 years - while the party's support in the devolved contests in Scotland and Wales could be to be smaller than at the time of Michael Foot's leadership and the SDP breakaway in the early 1980s.
With media reports relishing the prospect of voters taking the opportunity to give departing Prime Minister Blair "one last kicking", Chancellor Brown admitted yesterday that the predicted drubbing would also reflect badly on him and represent a mid-term judgment on the entire Labour government and not just Mr Blair.
Speaking on ITV's Sunday Edition programme, however, Mr Brown described Labour's expected poll losses as "a phase" unlikely to say much about the party's prospects for winning a fourth term under new leadership.
And he dismissed suggestions by Conservative leader David Cameron that he should call an early general election if elected to succeed Mr Blair in June.
At the same time - ahead of the 10th anniversary on Tuesday of his first election victory - various reports yesterday suggested that Mr Blair is finally preparing to "bury the hatchet" and endorse Mr Brown's leadership bid.
Having ruled out a surprise announcement ahead of this week's elections, Mr Blair is widely expected to make his long-awaited resignation statement a day or two after witnessing the installation of Northern Ireland's new powersharing executive on May 8th.
With Labour's seven or eight-week leadership campaign now clearly in view, Mr Blair has reportedly been telling friends the time is fast approaching to "heal wounds" with the man for so long publicly impatient to take his job.
Cynics may feel Mr Blair has been left with little choice, following Environment Secretary David Miliband's decision to rule himself out of the race.
It was also being claimed yesterday that Mr Blair would back Mr Brown even if Home Secretary John Reid, or his predecessor Charles Clarke, mustered the necessary backing of 44 MPs to launch a "kamikaze" mission to prevent Mr Brown's "coronation" as Labour leader.
The sense of inevitability about Mr Brown's succession will be underlined today when Blair loyalist, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, backs the chancellor and calls for "no more Blairites and Brownites" and the end of such "tribalism" in New Labour.
Mr Reid also insisted yesterday that the Labour Party would not be "fractured" after Mr Blair stands down as leader.
However, Mr Reid again refused to rule himself out as a leadership contender, and declined to say whether it was now "a done deal" that Mr Brown would succeed Mr Blair. Speaking on the BBC's Sunday AM programme, Mr Reid said the election that mattered to him was the future one giving people a choice between the Conservatives and Labour.
Mr Cameron stepped-up his attacks on Mr Blair and his presumed successor yesterday, suggesting Mr Blair was still engaged in "spin" by thinking to "bury the bad news" of Labour's election defeats with his resignation statement. "I've got some news for Tony Blair," said the Tory leader. "It doesn't matter if he resigns next week, next month or even next year. Because the bad news won't stop with Tony Blair.
"Blair may be going, but we now know that it's Brown who's coming, the man who raised our taxes, wrecked our pensions and ruined trust in politics with his endless centralisation, meddling and spin. New leader, same old Labour - that's not what Britain needs."
Behind the bullish talk, however, the Conservative leader will be troubled by expert analysis suggesting that he is failing to fully exploit Labour's difficulties, with support still running short of the 40 per cent plus share of the national vote necessary to show that he is on target for a general election victory.
While the Conservatives should find it easy to make substantial gains in the local elections in the south of England, the party is still struggling to establish any significant presence in major northern cities. At the same time polls suggest it will fail to overtake Plaid Cymru as the second party in the Welsh Assembly, while Scotland could see Tory support drop still further to an all-time low.