BRITAIN:There is renewed speculation in political circles that prime minister Tony Blair could spring a surprise and announce his resignation in the next week, ahead of the devolved and local elections on May 3rd.
The general expectation remains that Mr Blair will finally trigger Labour's long-awaited leadership contest a day or two after seeing Northern Ireland's new powersharing Executive sworn in at Stormont on May 8th.
However, a renewed focus on the timing and manner of his going coincides with fresh opinion poll data showing the SNP still ahead of Labour in Scotland. Moreover, reports that early charges against key figures in the "cash-for-honours" affair could overshadow Mr Blair's final days in office before he finally hands over to his successor in June.
Chancellor Gordon Brown's apparent grip on the Labour succession tightened yesterday when environment secretary David Miliband ruled himself out of the race and declared he would be voting for Mr Brown.
Well informed sources say that Mr Brown - for so long publicly impatient to take over at Number 10 - would prefer Mr Blair to delay his announcement until after Labour's expected heavy losses in the devolved and local elections at the beginning of next month.
The sources suggest that that fact alone - coupled with a politician's desire to maintain an element of control and surprise - could be precisely why Mr Blair might yet decide that "the optimum moment to go" could be before the widely predicted poll disaster.
Yesterday's Mail on Sunday also reported pressure on Mr Blair to confirm his intentions early in the hope, as one Labour aide suggested, that it would "remove one of the main reasons for [the electors] giving Labour a bloody nose".
In Edinburgh on Saturday Mr Brown again claimed the SNP was losing its appeal and facing "a moment of truth" over the cost of Scottish independence.
However, two separate polls showed Alex Salmond's nationalists still set to overtake Labour as the largest party in the Scottish parliament, while needing a coalition deal with the Liberal Democrats, and possibly the Greens, to get into power.
The Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell said the decision on whether to enter a partnership government with the SNP would be for the party's Scottish leadership to decide. However, Mr Campbell said the nationalists would have to put the issue of independence "out of sight" in order to reach any coalition deal.
"If it's not out of sight, then the whole of the time that the two parties were together, the SNP would be doing everything in their power to maximise the opportunity for an affirmative vote eventually on independence," he told the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme.
A series of reports on Sunday claimed Scotland Yard detectives believe they have amassed enough evidence to prosecute Mr Blair's chief of staff Jonathan Powell and other key aides over an alleged cover-up in the cash-for-honours affair.
On Friday the metropolitan police completed its 13-month inquiry into the alleged sale of honours and sent its 216-page report to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Amid suggestions that the CPS decision on whether to press charges could be taken before Mr Blair finally leaves Downing Street, Conservative shadow home secretary David Davis yesterday urged the CPS to "bring this to a close".
"What I do not want to see is a politically driven timetable for these decisions," he added.
However, Labour's former minister Frank Field MP echoed widespread unease about perceived police briefings in relation to the case.
"The police's behaviour has been disgraceful. They are obviously so unconfident of getting charges to stick that they have leaked this idea that people should be charged before the whole farce is exposed," he said.
Attorney general Lord Goldsmith also said it would be "worth looking" at who had been briefing the media over the investigation, while ruling out a formal inquiry. He told Sky News obviously "some talking" had been going on, which he said was not helpful.