A ministerial revolt forced John Howard, the veteran Australian Prime Minister, to pledge last night that he would step down midway through his next term if reelected in the forthcoming general election.

Ministers and MPs, alarmed by opinion polls that suggest a heavy defeat for the ruling coalition, asked Mr Howard, 68, to stand aside rather than seek a fifth three-year term. A defiant Mr Howard told rebels that he would have to be “blasted out of the job”.

However, hours later he announced, during an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he would resign before the end of his next term. He said: “I won’t find it easy, if I am reelected, to retire. I won’t find it the least bit easy because I am very committed to this job and I will not like leaving it. But everything comes to an end . . . and we must be honest and candid and adult about it.”

Mr Howard has led the governing conservative coalition since 1996 and has presided over a period of strong economic growth, which has underpinned his Government’s popularity.

Latest opinion polls, however, indicate that voters favour change at the next election, which is expected to be called within weeks. Newspoll, the closely followed opinion poll, shows support for Kevin Rudd and the opposition Labor Party at 59 per cent and the Government at 41 per cent.

Mr Howard admitted yesterday that last week he had asked Alexander Downer, the Foreign Minister and his close confidant, to ascertain whether members of his Cabinet wanted him to resign. The ministers, who assembled in Mr Downer’s Sydney hotel room during the Apec summit last week, concluded that the conservative coalition would have a better chance of being reelected if Mr Howard handed the leadership over to his Treasurer, Peter Costello.

Mr Downer passed this on to Mr Howard the next day but, according to reports, the Prime Minister retorted that he had no intention of resigning and would have to be “blasted out of the job”.

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