Leadership contest for Britain's Labour officially starts

BRITAIN: Nominations officially opened for the election to succeed Tony Blair as Labour Party leader, as two challengers to his most likely successor assessed whether they have enough support to run.

The seven-week election campaign formally began at 2:30 pm after a five-minute meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party in London.

Lawmakers now have until 12:30 pm Thursday to register their support for candidates.

Each hopeful needs at least 44 nominations to have his or her name on the ballot paper, which will be sent out to more than three million Labour members and political levy-paying members of its affiliated organisations.

The odds-on favourite, finance minister Gordon Brown, the leader of the Socialist group of Labour lawmakers, John McDonnell, and veteran Michael Meacher have said they will stand for the top job Blair has held since 1994.

A deputy leadership contest is being held at the same time. Six candidates have so far declared their candidacy for what is likely to be a much closer contest.

Meacher and McDonnell were scheduled to meet Monday afternoon to determine who will go forward to challenge Brown for the leadership amid concerns they will split the left-wing vote if both stand.

They failed to agree at a meeting last Friday who should stand down, prompting speculation that they were struggling to get the required backing.

McDonnell, Meacher and Brown took part in a debate Sunday night in which all three accepted the need for Labour to change to redress a slump in the polls and recent local election losses to opposition parties.

Meacher told BBC radio Monday it was a "very good bet" that one left-winger would be on the ballot and refused to rule out a shock win, with support from disaffected party members unhappy with issues like Iraq.

"I still believe that we can very definitely win the next general election but we are not going to do it by tweaking the odd policies here and there, only by a fundamental change of direction and for that we need a debate," he said.

Meanwhile Britain's governing Labour Party received a boost on Tuesday as an opinion poll showed the party was catching up with the opposition Conservatives after Prime Minister Tony Blair announced he would resign in June.

The Populus poll in the Times newspaper also had good news for Gordon Brown hot favourite to replace Blair as Labour leader and Britain's new prime minister finding that he was rated more highly than Conservative leader David Cameron.

Support for Labour was up 4 points from a month ago at 33 percent, while support for the Conservatives was unchanged at 37 percent, according to the survey.

Brown scored 5.00, putting him just ahead of Cameron on 4.95. Blair, however, came out on top with 5.22.

London, Tuesday, AFP, Reuters.