British Prime Minister Tony Blair faces the last electoral test of his decade in power today in the local and regional elections.
Mr Blair's Labour Party is expected to suffer heavy losses in the elections to local councils, the Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly, as the Iraq war, political scandals and discontent with public services cost the party support.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to leave office by July. Image: Reuters.
The local council elections will measure Conservative leader David Cameron's progress as he attempts to build his centre-right party into a force that can challenge for national power again after 10 years in the wilderness.
But the main focus will be on Scotland, where opinion polls suggest Scottish National Party (SNP), which wants independence from Britain, could oust Labour as the biggest party in the Scottish parliament, ending 50 years of Labour dominance in Scotland.
That could allow SNP leader Alex Salmond to rule in coalition in Scotland and put in practice his plan for a referendum on independence in 2010.
An SNP breakthrough would be a setback to Mr Blair, who backs England's 300-year-old union with Scotland. Labour hoped to defuse calls for independence by setting up the Edinburgh parliament in 1999 with limited powers over Scottish affairs.
It would leave Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, a 56-year-old Scot who appears certain to succeed Mr Blair as prime minister, with the headache of how to manage potentially difficult relations with an SNP-led Scottish executive.
Mr Blair, Labour's longest-serving prime minister, is expected to announce next week he will leave office by July.
A poll in the Guardian yesterday showed the SNP lead over Labour narrowing in a sign that Labour attacks on the SNP's independence plan were having an impact. It also showed a majority of Scots opposed independence.
In the local council elections, the Conservatives - who held power nationally for 18 years before Mr Blair won the first of three election victories in 1997 - are set to do well in their prosperous heartlands in the south of England.
But they are having difficulty extending their reach into northern cities, such as Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle which have no Conservative councillors at all.