Britain's politicians were embarking on one final campaign push yesterday, a day before an election which appears increasingly likely to hand Prime Minister Tony Blair a third straight term in office.

Blair was expected to make his government's handling of the buoyant British economy during its eight years in power the centrepiece of his final push ahead of the polling booths opening on Thursday morning.

"Now the people are in the driving seat," he said on GMTV breakfast television, in the first of a full slate of interviews and Labour Party rallies aimed at wooing legions of uncommitted voters.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the opposition Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were making their own last campaign calls, urging voters to punish Blair over the unpopular Iraq war and other issues.

Despite a frantic and sometimes bitter few weeks of campaigning, both pundits and opinion polls have remained constant throughout: Blair's Labour Party is likely to be reelected, albeit most likely with a smaller parliamentary majority.

No new opinion polls were published in Wednesday's British newspapers, but the tone of the coverage suggested clearly that the election outcome was beginning to look a foregone conclusion.

The right-wing Daily Mail published a three-page guide to parliamentary seats in which so-called "tactical voting" could remove Labour Party lawmakers, thus helping "give Mr. Blair a bloody nose".

This appeared the best feasible outcome, the Blair-detesting newspaper admitted in an editorial column.

"If we're being honest, our support for a Conservative victory -which we concede is unlikely -- is superseded by an even greater imperative: to diminish the power of the overweeningly arrogant Mr. Blair and restore a healthy democracy to this country," it said.

The sense of inevitability led some papers to leave the election off their front pages, focusing instead on news such as Tuesday night's all-English football Champions League semi-final.