BritainTony Blair goes into today's general election buoyed by the final polls and insistent Labour's majority will be big enough to let him serve a full final third term as British prime minister.
As the battle in the key marginal seats continued into the night hours, Conservative leader Michael Howard maintained he would confound the opinion pollsters - citing his team Liverpool's victory in the European Cup semi-final as a possible "omen" of a shock result.
And Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy claimed Labour was "very badly rattled" by his party's challenge, while predicting a Tory "slump" and echoing Mr Howard's invitation to the voters to "send a message" to Mr Blair.
Addressing supporters in London's Brent East - scene of the Lib Dems' famous byelection victory - Mr Kennedy suggested people should vote positively for his party but also to deny Mr Blair another huge Commons majority with which to "ride roughshod" over dissent.
Mr Blair, flanked again by chancellor Gordon Brown and surrounded by his entire cabinet, symbolically chose Baroness Thatcher's old Finchley constituency for a final round of warnings that a protest vote for the Lib Dems risked letting the Conservatives in "by the back door". But while Mr Blair predicted a "tough and tight" fight for votes on a "constituency by constituency" basis, he also declared: "I am completely confident we have won comprehensively on the issues that matter."
And that confidence was on display earlier when he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Labour's rules would not require him to make way for a successor nine or even six months before the end of the next parliament.
Mr Blair acknowledged that trust was an issue in the election, while again defending his actions over the war in Iraq.
And he insisted that the interpretation of a series of leaks from the heart of his government, suggesting that he had given President Bush a prior commitment to support regime change in Iraq while keeping the British people in the dark, was "simply wrong".
Mr Blair repeated it had been "vital" in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the US in September 2001 for western leaders to take a different attitude to weapons of mass destruction, and those prepared to use them to kill, not just 3,000 people, but 300,000 if they were able.
And he said Iraq had been "a good place to start" both because of Saddam Hussein's previous record of non-compliance, and as a warning to other states with banned weapons. He said criticisms of him were "inconsistent" and that if his goal had been regime change, he would not have supported UN Resolution 1441 giving Saddam one last opportunity to comply.
Allowing no let-up in his criticisms of Mr Blair over the war, Mr Kennedy yesterday warned the prime minister not to insult the intelligence of voters tempted to cast a protest vote against Labour.
Ominously for Mr Howard, several reports yesterday brought the first signs of senior Tories positioning themselves on the question of future leadership should Mr Howard preside over a third heavy defeat.
Some 45 million people are eligible to cast their votes up to 10pm for the 646 seats across the United Kingdom.
