TONY BLAIR has ordered his closest aides to make urgent plans for a snap election.

The move, aimed at wrong-footing his opponents, could see the country going to the polls as early as February.

The Labour party election unit is making detailed plans, which include an advertising campaign. Posters will begin to appear early in the new year.

Until now the assumption in Westminster and Whitehall has been that the election would be held on May 5. Ministers have dropped broad hints that this is when Labour will try to win a third term.

However, Alan Milburn, the former health secretary who was brought back into the cabinet last month to run the election campaign, has told friends he is confident that the February strategy will work.

Milburn agreed at a meeting last week that Labour’s campaign slogan would be “Britain is working”. Milburn has also drawn up a timetable of the daily and weekly meetings of key committees in the run-up to, and during, the election campaign.

The slogan, tested at the local elections in June, will feed into Labour’s key argument that it has managed the economy well and can be trusted to carry on doing so. It is an ironic reference back to the Conservatives’ winning slogan in 1979, “Labour isn’t working”.

Party strategists are also keen to reclaim ground on what they call “the trust issue”. A YouGov poll for The Sunday Times recently found that trust in the prime minister had fallen sharply.

It showed that two out of three people would not trust Blair to take the country to war again and only 29% said they trusted him on public services.Blair has admitted that he has a problem with “trust” and his pollsters say there is little sign from the public that this is likely to change soon.

However, the economy is one area where his advisers believe that the government maintains some credibility.

With that in mind Milburn has invited aides of Gordon Brown to take part in planning the campaign. Fraser Kemp, a Labour whip and a proven campaign specialist, has also been drafted in to be Milburn’s deputy.

Despite the prime minister’s problems over winning public trust, Blair and Milburn point to the lack of progress made by the Conservatives under Michael Howard as a reason for optimism. The Tories have failed to make a significant breakthrough since Howard took over the leadership a year ago.

A poll published this weekend showed the Tories five points behind Labour, the same margin as when Iain Duncan Smith was ousted.

By holding a surprise election in February or March, Blair wants to show that he is “not willing to be buffeted by events and that he is decisive”, said one insider.

After bolstering its staff in the past few weeks, Labour is eager to move into a new election headquarters. A recent planned move to offices in Victoria Street, near the Palace of Westminster, fell through.

Blair believes that the first elections in Iraq in January will be held successfully and so may provide some “bounce” to a British election campaign held shortly afterwards.

Historically, however, holding elections outside the traditional spring or autumn months has not proved successful. The most famous example in recent decades was in 1974 when Edward Heath, then Conservative prime minister, went to the country in February on a “Who governs Britain?” ticket precipitated by the miners’ strike. Labour beat the Tories by four seats and Harold Wilson formed the government, after Heath and Jeremy Thorpe, the Liberal leader, failed to form a coalition.

Labour insiders say no comparisons should be drawn between 1974 and the economically benign conditions of the present. The Tories are pinning their hopes on a May election and optimistically predict a hung parliament if today’s poll findings continue to hold.

Privately, however, they are likely to be daunted by the prospect of having to get their party machinery in a fit condition to fight an election in only four months’ time.

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