Analysis: the opinion polls tell Tony Blair he's winning but he must ensure his supporters come out and vote Labour - and Tory leader Michael Howard may be helping him in that, writes Frank Millar
The strategy is working, the argument over policy already largely won, and the election as good as in the bag. That was the message for Tony Blair yesterday as he perused the Sunday papers and contemplated the final full week of the British general election campaign.
But the message had its unwelcome elements. The British prime minister will have been unhappy to read yesterday's Sunday Times account of a private memorandum to Labour's strategy team from Alastair Campbell, the party's strategist-in-chief, saying Labour was "home and dry" in the election.
The brilliant former Downing Street communications director has returned to the front line - or perhaps more accurately, to a fairly private back-seat - to oversee his hero's planned return with the kind of majority that will see Blair equal, if not exceed, Margaret Thatcher's tenure in Number 10.
From the outset Conservative leader Michael Howard has made a point of accusing Blair of "smirking" in anticipation of a historic third Labour victory. In what many interpret as a tacit concession that he does not himself expect to win, Howard has been asking the electorate to send the prime minister a message.
And Blair's determined response has been to insist he is taking nothing for granted, knowing only too well the undercurrent suggestion that many voters are at least tempted to "take that smile off his face". Indeed the only bipartisan note of the campaign so far has been Blair's agreement with Howard that "the polls are all over the place" and that the fight is "tough and tight" in marginal seats across Britain.
The Labour leader was at it again on Saturday, confirming the all-party focus on close to one million voters who could determine the election outcome, in many marginals on the turn of just a couple of hundred votes or less.
The bias that has developed in the electoral system courtesy of out-of-date boundaries, population movements, regional variations and tactical voting means that Blair can count on another Commons majority, even if Labour and the Conservatives claim an equal share of the votes cast on May 5th. There have also been some encouraging indications that turnout could be higher than the all-time low of 59 per cent in 2001.
However - with Howard and Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy now moving to push the questions of trust, character and the war up the agenda - Blair knows he cannot afford to have Labour supporters thinking the result a foregone conclusion, or a protest vote a cost-free option.
Which is why yesterday's reporting of Campbell's memorandum will not have been good news for Blair.
Campbell left his post after the controversies about the war, dodgy dossiers and the Dr David Kelly affair, to a generally accepted view that it is always wise for the "spin doctor" to go at once when he himself becomes the story.
Yet for all his determination, the spotlight seems to have an unfortunate way of finding Campbell, and his reappearance in the news may have been as unwelcome to the Labour high command as it was welcome to the many in the press who miss the excitement he brought to British politics.
As for Campbell's reported view that Howard's perceived "nastiness" has bestowed a "negative halo effect" on the Tory leader, and that people are now unfavourably comparing him with Thatcher "and even John Major"? Some Conservatives may have wondered if yesterday's "leak" could actually have been a dirty tricks operation, given conflicting advice and evidence on offer about the effect of Howard's determined continuing focus on immigration and asylum.
It has become part of the established wisdom that, while this is helping shore up the core Conservative vote, it is also helping undecided Labour voters off the fence by reminding them why, and how much, they dislike the Conservative Party. Against that, some polls have suggested the Conservative position on immigration makes some undecideds more likely to vote for Howard.
And from President Bush's media guru Mark McKinnon came the advice yesterday that Howard should continue to hammer home his message and ignore those who say he is running as a single-issue candidate: "Better to be identified strongly with one issue than with none or too many."
This will have spelt despair for former Tory "modernisers" like Michael Portillo and Steve Norris, now fretting from the sidelines that the focus on this issue is indeed reminding people why they thought the Tories had become "the nasty party".
However, Howard will be encouraged by reports that this issue is playing well on the doorsteps, and by support from "the civilised right" in the form of Matthew Parris in Saturday's London Times following Blair's decision to join the debate on Friday.
Commenting that "no Blair speech would be complete without one howling whopper", the award-winning Parris noted Blair's assertion that no one would accuse those raising the subject of immigration and asylum of racism, before levelling precisely that charge at Howard.
Noting that in the process Blair actually conceded some points of substance to the Conservative position, Parris suggested that the Conservatives might not be winning the election but were winning the argument, and that immigration limits will be on the agenda for whoever forms the next government. That, however, would be no consolation to Howard.
Yet however he calls it, Howard starts the final week with a surprising spring in his step.
He has survived the weekend many commentators had earmarked for an inevitable Tory implosion as the polls refuse to budge. He more than held his own against Jeremy Paxman in a very polished performance on Friday night.
And he seems to have overcome his reticence and is ready to talk about Blair's war. With Kennedy joining the fray, the election is about to get deeply personal.