06 June 2004	Sunday	17 Rabi-us-Saani 1425

LONDON: Tony Blair is planning an instant political fightback in the wake of next week's European and local election results amid early signs that a postal voting experiment is not delivering Labour's desired big increase in working-class turnout.

Downing Street has already prepared a strategy in which Mr Blair will be presented as "a man with a plan" and in full control of events. He hopes by the weekend after the election results to point to an agreed UN strategy for Iraq, and look forward to a successful outcome from the final EU heads of government negotiation on the EU constitution on June 19.

He is expected to follow up with a big speech setting out his aims for the public services.

The overall turnout in the four English regions - covering a third of the electorate - holding all-postal ballots does appear to have risen, at least in relation to the 1999 European elections. Senior Labour officials have told candidates turnout is heading well over 30 per cent.

But preliminary evidence from postal ballot returns this week show more middle-class areas, such as East Riding of Yorkshire and Pendle, in Lancashire, are voting more heavily than predominantly working-class areas such as Liverpool where returns so far are as low as 13 per cent.

In addition, Labour officials fear that many returned ballots may not be valid because voters have failed to fill in witness statements correctly. They are set to complain that the requirement for the statements was imposed at the last minute by opposition parties in the House of Lords.

Mr Blair, expecting a drubbing in next week's polls, is already preparing a media fightback, including appearances on BBC radio, an address to Labour MPs and a speech setting out his vision for radical public service reform in Labour's third term. The aim will be to crush any suggestion that the prime minister is an electoral liability, or that Labour has run out of ideas.

He is under pressure from some party modernisers to deliver his speech within two or three days of the election results, setting out a positive third-term agenda and scotching speculation about his leadership. Some modernisers argue privately that Labour's elections campaign has been too negative.

If the results are disastrous, the prime minister's office is braced for a renewed bout of speculation about the his leadership, but believe the campaign has seen the pressure gradually shift from Mr Blair to Michael Howard, leader of the opposition Conservative party, largely due to the emergence of the anti-EU UK Independence party (Ukip) as the chief receptacle of the protest vote.

Jonathan Aitken, the disgraced former Tory cabinet minister, became the latest convert to Ukip, saying he would be voting for the party because he wants Britain to be more like Norway and Switzerland.

Labour strategists are already claiming that Mr Howard's campaign has flopped and suggesting that the Tories will have failed if they do not win a minimum of 36% of the share of the vote in the Euro elections, the level achieved by the Tories under William Hague's leadership in 1999.

All political parties are holding their breath, awaiting unusually unpredictable election results.

Redrawing of the electoral boundaries makes the outcome of the metropolitan councils very hard to read, but the Liberal Democrats are hoping to retain control of Liverpool, and seize overall control in Kirklees, Sheffield and Newcastle, setting a springboard for a general election assault on Labour across the north. The Tories (Conservatives) are targeting Birmingham and hoping to regain control of councils in the south such as Winchester and Cheltenham.

There are also tentative signs from parties that have seen returns that Ukip has damaged the progress of the far-right British National party, at least in the north-west.-Dawn/The Guardian News Service.