BRITAIN: Tory frontrunner David Cameron appeared unstoppable last night after the Daily Telegraph and the Sun finally endorsed his bid for the Conservative leadership.
At the same time departing Conservative leader Michael Howard questioned chancellor Gordon Brown's fitness to be prime minister, as an opinion poll showed a clear majority of Britons believing "the wheels are starting to come off" the Blair government.
Mr Howard stormed into the row over Mr Brown's alleged "sabotage" of the Turner report on Britain's growing pensions crisis, due to be published next week, claiming the chancellor was "the only man" blocking vital reforms and as such was not fit to succeed Mr Blair at No 10.
Despite Labour's narrowing two-point lead over the Conservatives, yesterday's YouGov poll also suggested that Mr Cameron would still have difficulty beating Labour at the next election.
Some 46 per cent of those polled said they would prefer a Brown-led Labour government to 37 per cent favouring a Cameron-led Tory administration.
However, the leak of the chancellor's concerns about Lord Turner's expected proposal to raise the retirement age to 67 and restore the pensions link to earnings encouraging renewed speculation about tensions between 10 and 11 Downing Street.
Mr Howard claimed the government was in disarray and that "the only man out of step is Gordon Brown".
And he predicted: "As people recognise his shortcomings, the flaws in the way in which he goes about the business of government . . . I think they will realise he is not the best man to lead the country."
Mr Howard was speaking to the BBC as the Daily Telegraph finally ended its indecision and concluded that, not only should he succeed Mr Howard, but that Mr Cameron was the one man holding out "the real prospect of a change of government in 2009 or 2010."
The paper was drawing on the conclusions of its YouGov poll after another difficult week saw the Blair government on the defensive over flu vaccine and threatened energy shortages, further revelations about the split over the smoking ban, and Brownites accusing Blairites (and vice versa) over the prepublication row about the government-commissioned report on the pensions crisis.
Almost three-quarters of those polled said that, irrespective of their own views, Labour's reputation in the country was gradually getting worse.
A substantial 41 per cent believed that in the eyes of the country as a whole the Conservative Party's standing was gradually getting better.
With only 30 per cent now approving the government's overall performance, even fewer - 26 per cent - said they believed the prime minister and his colleagues had on balance proved honest and trustworthy.
Meanwhile, one major cause of Labour division, the Iraq war, continued to haunt Mr Blair yesterday as former defence minister Peter Kilfoyle tabled a Commons motion calling on the prime minister to publish a top secret transcript of a discussion with George Bush in which the US president allegedly proposed bombing Arab television station Al-Jazeera.