British Prime Minister Tony Blair faced fresh calls to resign after three senior cabinet ministers floundered in political and personal crises in one of the government's darkest weeks. Newspapers gave a damning verdict on the governing Labour Party's woes, which climaxed in a sex scandal starring the deputy prime minister, a crime blunder by the interior minister and a snub by nurses for the health minister.
"A government in meltdown," said the right-wing Daily Mail in an editorial.
"Labour Clowns," echoed The Sun tabloid, while The Daily Telegraph went a step further saying: "Blair must pay the price for his misgovernment."
A week before local elections in England, Blair's Labour Party -- once the image of hope and change following years of sleaze under the Conservatives -- appears to have lost its sparkle as reflected in recent opinion polls.
The latest blow came on Wednesday when Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, 67, admitted to tabloid revelations that he had cheated on his wife by having a two-year affair with a civil servant 24 years his junior.
The shock admission, coupled with pages of revealing newspaper photographs, added to the problems plaguing Blair's administration after the Home Office revealed 24 hours earlier that it had failed to consider whether more than 1,000 foreign convicts should be deported at the end of their sentences.
Instead the criminals, who included murderers, rapists and child molesters, were set free in Britain.
Home Secretary Charles Clarke has apologised for the blunder and offered twice to resign, but Blair refused to accept his resignation, preferring instead for the minister to stay on and sort the mess out.
Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt also found herself in hot water. She was repeatedly booed and slow-handclapped during a televised address to the Royal College of Nursing because of anger over the government's health reforms.
The heckling eventually forced Hewitt, who has been repeatedly mocked this week for claiming the National Health Service has enjoyed its "best year ever", to cut short her speech.
Such public humiliation for three close Blair allies inspired columns of criticism in the British press.
"It is possible that Tony Blair has had worse days as prime minister. It is not immediately evident when they might have been," said The Times in an editorial.
"It has left the collective impression of a government that is out of touch in the first case, astonishingly incompetent in the second and morally unhinged in the third," the newspaper wrote.
The Daily Mail, a frequent critic of the government, devoted at least 14 pages to the furore.
"... presiding over this whole sleazy row is a lame duck prime minister who took Britain to war on the basis of repeated lies and who cannot carry legislation (through parliament) without the help of the Tories," it said.
"Out of ideas, drained of energy, lurching from one crisis to the next, New Labour has never looked more vulnerable."
Next week's local council elections, including all 32 boroughs in London, are being closely watched as a test of Blair's popularity a year after he led Labour to a third straight term in power.
If the party suffers big losses next Thursday, it could hasten the day that Blair decides on his pledge to stand down sometime during his third term to make way for his more popular finance minister Gordon Brown.
Picking up on a comment made by the prime minister this week about how to lead a healthier life, the Daily Telegraph noted that "he suggested that people improve their lives by getting off the bus one stop early. Mr Blair could do worse than take his own advice."
