UK's Blair prepares for election

By CNN's Robin Oakley

Prime Minister Tony Blair's first press conference on foot-and-mouth disease and his announcement of the last funeral pyre for animal carcasses was clearly designed as a desk-clearing exercise before the calling of a general election.

While he was careful to tell reporters in Downing Street the battle against the animal disease was not yet over, he insisted the government was "getting it under control."

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That leaves him free to call the election without facing accusations that it would be "inappropriate" to do so while many thousands of animals were still being slaughtered every week and many farming communities were being devastated.

That was the reason he gave back in April for postponing local government elections originally due on May 3 and, by implication, the general election previously expected to be held then too.

With the progress in tackling foot-and-mouth over the past month, Blair has been able to demonstrate that there has been a significant drop in new outbreaks of the disease.

He will be relieved by that because other ministers were insistent that the election should not be allowed to slip any later than June.

They fear growing economic troubles in the autumn on the back of the downturn in America could affect the margin of the expected Labour victory at the polls.

By delaying the election, Blair has been able to avoid accusations of being arrogant and ignoring feelings in rural areas.

With opinion polls still giving Labour a 20-point lead over the opposition Conservative party, he has been able to answer the critics in his own party who feared that delaying the election might have lost Labour an advantage.

The Prime Minister was keen to appear as a leader conscious of the national interest and not just of party advantage and his tactics appear to have been proved right.

It would be unfair to say that Blair's staging of a Downing Street press conference on foot-and-mouth was purely for electoral considerations.

He was able to use the occasion to stress to foreign journalists and their audiences that Britain remains open for business and for pleasure.

He was keen to emphasise that none of the 15 instances where humans have been investigated as possible foot-and-mouth victims has produced a positive test.

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