BRITAIN:The sense of political change in Britain quickened again yesterday with home secretary John Reid's announcement that he will back Gordon Brown but quit the cabinet when the apparently unassailable chancellor assumes the Labour leadership next month.
Mr Brown will formally declare his candidacy at the end of this week, following outgoing prime minister Tony Blair's statement confirming his resignation timetable, now expected on Thursday.
With only a "token" challenge from the left seeming to stand in the way of Mr Brown's "coronation", Labour MPs are hoping he can use the forthcoming leadership contest to start preparing the party for the suddenly more difficult task of winning a fourth term in office.
As coalition talks get under way in Edinburgh and Cardiff, expert analysts are divided as to whether the Conservative Party's performance in the English local elections make David Cameron the likely general election winner.
And with a "hung parliament" an equally serious possibility, there is renewed speculation about the viability of Sir Menzies Campbell's leadership of the Liberal Democrats following their loss of more than 250 council seats last Thursday.
That possibility might also give Northern Ireland's first minister-designate the Rev Ian Paisley some advantage in ongoing negotiations with Mr Brown following his weekend criticism of the chancellor's approach to the financial package to aid the new devolved government taking power at Stormont tomorrow.
The Liberal Democrats in Scotland yesterday appeared to rule out a coalition deal with Labour in the new Parliament at Holyrood, signalling they would prefer to return to the backbenches if unable to share power with the one-seat majority SNP led by Alex Salmond.
There is also strong internal party resistance to a new coalition with Labour in Cardiff, where the Lib Dems won six Assembly seats for the third consecutive election last Thursday.
Amid uncertainty as to whether Mr Salmond can forge a coalition or might be forced to form a minority administration, at least two separate legal challenges are being considered to last Thursday's results, in which up to 100,000 ballot papers were rejected and counted as spoiled.
SNP deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon suggested that, while the technical and other problems attending the vote were "extremely regrettable", they were unlikely to have affected any one party more than another, and that people would not want to see a protracted legal challenge.
However, Mike Dailly from the Govan Law Centre said there had been about 10,000 spoiled ballots on the regional list in Glasgow which might well have affected the final line-up in the new parliament.
Meanwhile, former Labour minister Allan Wilson was consulting party lawyers about a possible challenge to the result in Cunninghame North seat, where there were more than 1,000 rejected papers and he lost to the SNP by just 48 votes. The present first minister, Jack McConnell, said any challenge would be for the local candidate and agent to decide.
Mr McConnell acknowledged yesterday that Mr Salmond had "the first move" in seeking to form an administration, while insisting the other parties were also part of the equation and that Labour would make its own move if the SNP leader failed.
However, Liberal Democrat MSP Tavish Scott, who directed his party's campaign, ruled out a coalition deal with Labour while repeating his party's opposition to the SNP's proposed referendum on Scottish Independence.
"It is obviously the issue that we are absolutely not going to have anything to do with - because my party do not support independence," he told the BBC's The Politics Show.
On the same programme Mr Reid said he had discussed with Gordon Brown his decision to retire to the backbenches after doing nine jobs in 10 years of Blair government.
Asked if he was jumping before he was pushed, Mr Reid said he had been assured there was a place for him in a Brown cabinet.
But Mr Reid said it was right for the party and a new prime minister to be given the maximum flexibility "in terms of introducing his new ideas, new agenda - same direction perhaps in pursuit of that, certainly new people - a fresh start bringing in younger people in many cases".
Work and pensions secretary John Hutton and former home secretary Charles Clarke also ruled themselves out of the leadership race at the weekend.
That news virtually signals the end of "Blairite"' hopes to mount a heavyweight challenge to Mr Brown.