HIS TIME IS RUNNING OUT: British Prime Minister John Major delivers a speech in front of an imposing wall decoration during a breakfast meeting at the Savoy Hotel, in London on Wednesday. British political parties are gearing up today for the final 48 hours of campaigning as two more influential newspapers declared their preferences and the latest opinion poll predicted a resounding victory for opposition Labour. FOR BETTER OR WORSE: Tony Blair. This time tomorrow, by all accounts, Tony Blair will be Britain's new Prime Minister. Opinion polls, newspapers, analysts, experts and even some Conservative politicians are agreed that after 18 years in Opposition, Labour will be back in government. Even the official Conservative machinery occasionally lets slip that it can see what is happening; Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine warned that Britain was ``sleepwalking into a nightmare''. This has been a long campaign. Six gruelling weeks for the Conservatives and a year for Labour. Labour's chief `spin doctor', Peter Mandelson was confident and relaxed as he told journalists that everything had worked to plan, from the time the party launched its `mini manifesto' last year. David Willets, the Conservative campaign organiser, admitted that the reason that they had decided on a ``long'' campaign was to give Labour time in which to unravel over issues of tax and Europe. Apparently this did not work out as planned. The one thing that has been repeated over and over through this campaign period is: ``There is so little to choose between them'' or ``they are all alike'' or ``how is Labour different from the Tories?''. Both parties have promised not to raise income tax, have promised higher funding for health and education, create employment, be tough on crime, ``wait and see'' whether it is in Britain's interest to join the single European currency and strengthen the British union. The difference between Labour and Conservative policy proposals is that Labour has made a commitment to a minimum wage, to be tough on the `causes' of crime, to reform the House of Lords, to work towards establishing a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh assembly. Labour's manifesto is `unexciting'. But the party only says that it wants to make Britain ``better''. There is no talk of revolution, a word that has been expunged from the Labour lexicon. The party has journey to the middle ground - the `radical centre' throwing off its millstones and some would say its `principles' on the way. Its leader, however, says that he speaks in the voice of Clement Atlee and Keir Hardy but in the language of the late 20th century. He says that what Labour offers is ``not just a policy programme, but a value system''. Opinion polls certainly say that Labour's message has got through. Throughout this election campaign, commentators have said that Labour has looked like the party of government, and the Conservatives who have been on the defensive. The campaign was led by Labour, and the Conservatives were left defending their failure rather than playing up their successes. In ideal circumstances, they should have benefited from the recent upturn in the economy, but the acrimonious public divisions within the party helped to strengthen Labour's message that it was time for a change. At the end of the day the campaign was about `trust'. The Labour Party's message was: Can you still support the Conservatives who after 18 years have ``divided the nations, withered the economy and fattened their friends''? or can you trust new Labour, whose leader has made a ``contract with Britain'' spelling out what he will do in government and told you that ``the buck stops with me''. The Conservatives have played on Labour's distant past telling people how bad it was, with striking workers and garbage piled up on the streets.But, the mood for change that seems to have bolstered Labour's campaign has as much or as little to do with what each party stands for, as it does with a desire to just try something a little different.
