The Conservatives made a play on the now-notorious John Prescott punch yesterday, unveiling a clenched-fist poster warning British taxpayers the Labour government would hit them hard.
And the Tory leader, Mr William Hague, deployed humour to deride Labour's depiction of him complete with Lady Thatcher's bouffant hairstyle and earrings.
"It would be good to have all that hair, though I'm not sure about the earrings," he quipped at his party's latest poster launch in Eastwood, near Glasgow.
The humour was needed on a day of adversity for the Tory leader, now trailing Labour by 19 points, and with possibly just seven days in which to save his job as Leader of the Opposition.
The latest poster war took place as doubts deepened over Mr Hague's continued warfare over the euro following ICM's shock finding that voters put the single currency 11th and last on their list of important issues to be determined on June 7th.
Two former Tory ministers seeking re-election broke silence yesterday to warn Mr Hague against making the euro the single issue of the final week of the campaign. And a third former minister, Mr John Lee, now retired, announced his defection to the Liberal Democrats amid signs of a retreat by the Tory high command from Mr Hague's assertion that next Thursday's election represents a "last chance" to "save the pound".
The Shadow Chancellor, Mr Michael Portillo, and the Cabinet Office spokesman, Mr Andrew Lansley, both appeared to modify the leader's line by saying June 7th was the last chance for "a fair vote" on the issue. However, Mr Lansley insisted the two formulations were one and the same, because a Labour government would have the opportunity to fix the referendum question and ensure campaigners for a Yes vote would have the financial advantage in a referendum campaign.
Mr Hague showed no sign of turning back. In Glasgow he dismissed suggestions that his campaign was too narrowly focused on the euro. "What is the point of having general elections if we are not going to talk about the great issues and fundamental choices facing the people of Britain?" he demanded.
"I will continue to make the retention of the pound and the independence of Britain a key issue in this election. It is my responsibility to shout the warning and say to the people of Britain, `Beware, your country is being taken away from you'," he declared.
And he told some 150 supporters they should welcome Labour's personal attacks as "a sure sign that they have run out of arguments".
However, it was Mr Hague who was battling to convince his party he had not already run out of time. Some polling experts had privately dismissed last week's large Labour leads in the opinion polls and predicted that the gap between Labour and the Conservatives would be down to single figures as the campaign entered its final week.
Despite the general expectation of a handsome Labour victory, therefore, there was surprise and some shock at yesterday's ICM finding that Labour's lead had soared by six points to a spectacular 19 points over the past week.
The survey put Labour on 47 per cent against 28 per cent for the Conservatives. These figures pointed to an even greater Tory defeat than that suffered by Mr John Major four years ago, and a possible "meltdown" in Mr Hague's leadership position - with the projected loss of some 35 Tory-held seats, leaving the party with as few as 128 MPs in the new House of Commons.
As the first of some two million postal votes were cast yesterday, the Prime Minister, Mr Blair, returned to the economy, telling voters their mortgage rates were on the ballot papers. No matter that Labour had surrendered the power to set interest rates to the Bank of England, the Chancellor, Mr Gordon Brown, said government policies had created the fiscal and monetary context in which the bank made its decisions. Mr Blair said mortgage holders were now saving £1,200 a year and warned Tory plans would drive up interest rates.