"My message is that we can win. Have you got it?"
Lady Thatcher was in demanding form as she returned to the hustings yesterday afternoon, giving journalists one of her famous "handbaggings" as they pressed her on her warning that a landslide victory for Labour next week would lead to "an elective dictatorship" in Britain.
Knowing that this had been taken as tacit admission that the Conservatives were going down to another heavy defeat, the battling baroness was anxious to hammer home the message that Mr William Hague was still in the fight.
The Tory leader was making the same point, even as he again acknowledged the possibility of defeat. Warning what would happen if the other side won was what parties did in an election. "Of course we point out the dangers of a government of spin, of arrogance - the sidelining of parliament. I fear that is ingrained in the Labour Party now whatever majority they were to win in the election, if they were to win the election," declared Mr Hague, while insisting his own campaign was going "extremely well".
Labour and the Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, accused the Tories of plotting to provoke apathy by encouraging expectations of another landslide for Mr Blair. Earlier this week Labour seemed to be pitching for precisely that, as they released private polling figures giving the party a 20-point lead.
Yesterday, however, Mr Blair anxiously stamped-on any presumption about the election outcome. "This poll has not happened yet. We have no majority, the election happens next Thursday. This is the latest part of the Conservative strategy," he said. "We have the extraordinary spectacle of a Conservative Party and a Conservative leader either urging people not to vote, or to vote Conservative to reduce the so-called Labour majority in an election that hasn't even happened."
The Liberal Democrat leader, Mr Charles Kennedy, renewed his pitch to supplant the Conservatives as the official Opposition. He suggested the Tories were already limbering up for the leadership contest which would follow defeat, adding: "If there is a Labour majority then that government needs an effective opposition. It is quite clear from what we are reading about the Tories it is not going to come from them." Mr Kennedy was referring to renewed reports that Mr Chris Patten and other leading pro-Europeans are planning to blow apart the Conservative Party's fragile truce if the result next Friday morning is as bad for Mr Hague as the polls predict.
In her Daily Telegraph article Lady Thatcher claimed Mr Blair was committed "to policies that will lead to the progressive extinction of Britain as an independent nation state." While she had "nothing in principle" against big Commons' majorities, she said she applauded strong government "but not overweening government, sustained by cronies, ciphers and a personality cult".
Campaigning in Hartlepool, Mr Peter Mandelson said Lady Thatcher's warning of an elected dictatorship was "the height of audacity", adding: "She has some brass neck that lady."