JOHN MAJOR last night made a final dramatic effort to rally the British electorate, telling them that they had just 72 hours in which to save the Union."
There was minor embarrassment for Mr Tony Blair, meanwhile, after an apparent official Whitehall briefing about his plans to move into Downing Street just as he renewed his warning to Labour supporters not to take the result of Thursday's general election for granted.
And as Mr Paddy Ashdown again insisted that up to a quarter of the electorate remained undecided, a spokesman for Mr Blair said: "We are making absolutely no comment on any speculation about any of Mr Blair's personal arrangements for after the election. We are concentrating on getting the vote out and winning."
Earlier, in a renewed warning against complacency, Mr Blair maintained the election result was not a foregone conclusion and that Britain was "not a landslide country."
But with remaining Tory hopes reduced to the herculean effort of just one man, the big event of the day was Mr Major's astonishing 1,000 mile round tour of the United Kingdom to renew his warnings against the "twin threats" of separatism and Eurofederalism.
To the accompanying chimes of Big Ben, Mr Major told some 300 supporters: "There are 72 hours in which to save the Union, 72 hours to make sure that the system of government that has prevailed in this country for a very long time is protected and enshrined, and not - through a combination of thoughtlessness and a failure to understand what these policies mean - not broken up and divided in one direction towards the EU, and the other to devolved parliaments across the United Kingdom."
Mr Major issued his clarion cry against the backdrop of the Westminster Parliament after his day long journey had taken him to Belfast, Edinburgh, and Anglesea in north Wales.
Returning to the theme which he believes helped turn the 1992 campaign, the Prime Minister said: "These are serious issues. It's not just a question of who governs this nation for the next five years although that certainly is a very important question. It's predominantly a question of what the government will do with those five years."
Pledging that a reelected Tory government would protect the Union, Mr Major declared: "We will draw that line in the sand. We will not surrender those vetoes to the European Union. We will not surrender the employment chapter to the EU. We will not sign the social chapter or open European social policies to come here to destroy jobs as well."
But with the hours slipping fast away, the bookmakers were unimpressed by Mr Michael Heseltine's renewed prediction that the Conservatives would win with a 60 seat majority. Instead, they were offering odds on his prospects of winning the Tory leadership in the battle which would follow a Labour win.