BRITAIN: Prime minister Tony Blair declared himself "restless for change" yesterday as he opened his campaign to avert a Labour rebellion over his controversial proposals for further education reform.
In a speech to business leaders in his Sedgefield constituency he said his government had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to improve schools.
However, Mr Blair faced renewed warnings that he must change his leadership style if a vote soon in the lifetime of this parliament is not to bring his premiership to an end.
At the same time a BBC survey suggested that as many as one in four Labour Party constituency chairmen now want Mr Blair to resign within the next year.
As Tory leadership candidates David Cameron and David Davis suggested Mr Blair would be unable to deliver his promise of greater parental choice and freedom, Liberal Democrats leader Charles Kennedy warned the prime minister against any temptation to "ride roughshod" over critics.
Following his first defeat in the Commons last week on the Terrorism Bill, Mr Kennedy said Mr Blair appeared to be starting "yet another high-wire act" over his education Bill.
"The scale of his defeat over terrorism legislation has clearly registered," said Mr Kennedy. "And if that means a proper dialogue over his education policy, we will welcome that."
But he continued: "If, yet again, he is intending to deploy all the arts of spin and manipulation, and then to ride roughshod over reasoned argument and criticism in parliament, he will be doing our teachers and our children a great disservice."
Amid estimates that as many as 100 Labour MPs might be prepared to rebel on the issue, Mr Blair again insisted his proposals did not mean a return to selection by academic ability.
Rejecting the "myth that 'middle-class' parents aspire and 'working-class' parents do not," Mr Blair said the purpose of the White Paper was to ensure that the choice now exercised only by the fortunate and the well-off could be given to all parents.
However, opponents would have detected implicit acknowledgment of the limits of Labour achievements in more than eight years in power as Mr Blair explained his impatience to end the educational failure of many children.
"That is why I am so restless for change," he said. "Not because I do not recognise the huge progress we have made as a country in eight years. I do. Not because I want to pick another fight for the sake of it. I have had enough of them already.
"But because, while there remain schools - not some, but hundreds of them - where fewer than half the children get the results they need at 16; when, for all the progress, still 17,000 children leave school every year without any qualifications; while that remains I cannot rest; I will not until we do all in our power to change that failure."
Mr Cameron, however, suggested Mr Blair would fail by way of "tired and half-hearted reforms" to deliver the improvements that were needed.