British Prime Minister Tony Blair today finally announced the general election will be on May 5th - and said the country faced a "fundamental choice" between Labour and the Tories.
His announcement this morning ended weeks of speculation, and triggered the first frantic bout of nationwide campaigning by the party leaders.
The news that had been delayed for 24 hours by the death of Pope John Paul II came on the premier's return from Buckingham Palace, where he asked the Queen to dissolve parliament on Monday.
"From now until May 5, me and my colleagues will be out every day in every part of Britain talking to the British people about our driving mission for a third term," Mr Balir told reporters outside Number 10.
Earlier Tory leader Michael Howard also told a rally of party supporters in London that voters faced a choice. "They can either reward Mr Blair for eight years of broken promises and vote for another five years of talk," he said.
"Or they can vote Conservative, to support a party that's taken a stand and is committed to action on the issues that matter to hard-working Britons."
Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy was in Newcastle to start his campaign effort with a pledge to be "positive and ambitious" for Britain. "I am not going to spend these next few weeks going around talking Britain down," he said. "I am going to be addressing people's hopes, not playing on people's fears."
Mr Blair left for Portland in the constituency of South Dorset immediately after his announcement, choosing Labour's most marginal seat - with a majority of 153 over the Tories - to kick off his party's campaign.
He hammered home his message, telling party supporters: "We have made progress - our economy is strong, mortgage rates are low, unemployment low, inflation low.
"We have got investment going into our public services. This is the time to keep the progress going, move the country forward."
Mr Howard went to Birmingham and Sale to take his campaign out to the country. He concentrated on the NHS and his party's plans to invest £34 billion in the health service .
He told his audience of supporters of his campaign on the MRSA hospital superbug: "For me cleaning up our hospitals isn't politics. It's personal. "Three years ago my mother-in-law died from an infection she picked up in hospital. "Yes she was frail. Yes she was old. But she still enjoyed life and she need not have died."
Mr Kennedy had the most hectic schedule - visiting Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh and Norwich. He again stressed his party's positive message: "For a country like ours with so much going on, a fairly prosperous society, a fairly stable society, a society and a country by international standards measures up well, we are going to be positive, we are going to be ambitious about our country and what we have to offer our country."
His campaign got an early morale boost when Labour's parliamentary candidate for the safe Tory seat of Ribble Valley, Stephen Wilkinson, defected to his party.
The general election announcement also triggered the traditional horse-trading at Westminster over which Government Bills will reach the statute book. Tonight it seemed certain both the controversial ID cards Bill and moves creating a new incitement to religious hatred would be among the measures lost - although the Gambling Bill seems certain to survive with the Government cutting back the number of new "super casinos" to just one.
PA