It is crunch time for Michael Howard. The Conservative leader was obliged to explain himself yesterday, after apparently conceding expected election defeat by acknowledging his team was "two goals down at half-time".
Time flies, as they say, when you're having fun. But with the election actually announced on April 5th, Mr Howard's True Blues are moving into the final quarter of the match. And there is no evidence yet of recovery.
True, the challengers have at times looked more eager and somewhat better co-ordinated than the defending champions, who appear slow and uncertain. Blair's Brownies established a decisive early lead and show no signs of yielding their advantage now.
There is, of course, time still for something to go disastrously wrong for Labour.
Today's latest polls will not reflect the impact, if any, of the resumed row over the war in Iraq, the attorney general's legal opinion, and the determined push by both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats to make "trust" in Prime Minister Tony Blair a defining election issue.
Mr Kennedy received a fillip yesterday from the defection of former Labour MP Brian Sedgemore in an anti-war manoeuvre which perversely might help some struggling Tories.
For all their brave talk of providing "the real alternative", it is very difficult for the Lib Dems to successfully penetrate Labour's traditional heartlands. And while Mr Howard's tough talk on immigration may have shored up his own core vote, the anecdotal evidence suggests this has been at the cost of reminding many Labour doubters why they so heartily detest the Conservatives.
What then of Labour voters, disillusioned about the war, living in constituencies where the Lib Dem candidate is the main challenger to a sitting Conservative MP? Wouldn't a "protest" vote in these circumstances prove a genuinely cost-free option, with the added bonus of boosting the anti-war party while getting rid of a Tory?
Mr Kennedy is counting on such calculations in support of his "decapitation strategy" aimed not just at the existing Conservative leadership (Mr Howard in Folkestone and Hythe) but the future leader tipped by many in the form of shadow home secretary David Davis (in Haltemprice and Howden).
Well-placed Conservative sources say this thinking is flawed, because Mr Sedgemore is "such an old socialist" (of a kind Mr Blair would have been happy to shed at any other time) that his defection will reinforce the Tory message that the Lib Dems are the party of the left.
However, if that offers comfort to Mr Davis and shadow chancellor Oliver Letwin (under Lib Dem threat in Dorset West), Mr Howard has little else to cheer about. Yesterday's NOP poll for the Independent gave Labour a 10-point advantage, while the Populus daily tracker in the Times had Labour holding its strong (41 per cent) lead ahead of the Conservatives on 33 per cent.
There are other alarming indicators from the polls. A majority apparently think Blair has failed to prove himself "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime", while in the lists of voter concerns Labour seemingly has a narrow advantage over the Conservatives on law and order.
With immigration losing its impact on the doorsteps, and the war registering little (at least before this week's renewed controversy), the equally disturbing news for the Tories is that they have failed to dent Labour's lead on the economy.
Voters are certainly in a peculiar state. They apparently discount chancellor Brown's denials of a "black hole" in his spending plans and suspect taxes will have to go up in a third term. Yet here's the rub. They think the Tories would be forced to put up taxes, too; a view possibly reinforced when Mr Letwin last week insisted he couldn't rule out an increase in national insurance contributions, even as he accused Mr Brown of preparing to do so again.
Even on immigration (harking back to it, as Mr Howard himself insists on doing) there may a curious thought process at work. "Are you thinking what we're thinking?"
According to one Tory thinker the punters might well be. But they may be declining to buy Howard because they do not believe he would actually do anything about immigration, if only because the European Union, the courts or whatever wouldn't let him.
All of which is to say the voters are either not believing Mr Howard, or are simply not hearing him. He has only a week left in which to persuade them why they should.