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Last Updated: Friday, 8 April, 2005, 19:37 GMT 20:37 UK
Election at-a-glance: 8 April
All you need to know about Day Four of the UK's 2005 general election campaign, at-a-glance:

8 APRIL IN A SENTENCE

The three main parties take a breather from campaigning as their leaders head to Rome for the Pope's funeral and call a 24-hour truce, but the impact of the crisis at MG Rover reverberates.

CAMPAIGN CATCH-UP

Tony Blair vows support for workers at car maker MG Rover, as the Conservatives and Lib Dems blame Labour policies for the company's collapse.

Tony Blair, Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy travel to Rome for the funeral of Pope John Paul II as campaigning pauses.

Former Blackburn Labour councillor Muhammed Hussain is jailed for three-and-a-half years for rigging postal votes.

Britain's longest serving MP Tam Dalyell says farewell after 43 years in the House of Commons.

Footage of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown talking politics will dominate Labour's first party election broadcast.

Candidates in marginal constituencies make their own DVDs in an unconventional bid to reach voters.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

We will do whatever we can possibly do to safeguard the livelihoods and jobs of the people here

Prime Minister Tony Blair on the crisis at MG Rover.

A VIEW FROM IRELAND

The Irish Times has viewed the UK election as a question of trust. Will the public renew its trust in Tony Blair as prime minister? Has trust broken out between Mr Blair and the Chancellor Gordon Brown? Will the questions over Iraq block trust for the Labour party on other issues?

Reporting on the last set-piece confrontation in the House of Commons before the election, the Dublin broadsheet described how Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy both aimed their sights on the "question of trust".

Mr Blair was "disconcerted" by the attack, says the paper. But the Irish Times says that the government still has a strong card in its economic record. It quoted Mr Blair's comment: "The Tories used to run on the economy, now they run away from it."

The paper also highlights fears that this general election could be marked by voter apathy and the threat of a record low turnout.

And it voices the possibility that the prospect of Mr Brown taking over from Mr Blair at some time in the future after the election might mobilise doubtful Labour voters into making the effort to get to the polling stations on 5 May.

The rights and wrongs of the Iraq war have divided opinion in Ireland as elsewhere - and in a separate article, the Irish Times focused on how Reg Keys, the father of a soldier killed in Iraq, would be standing against Mr Blair in his Sedgefield constituency.

Again it raised the question of trust and quoted Mr Keys's claim that the country had been misled over the war in Iraq.

PICK OF THE ANALYSIS

The sight of one of Britain's greatest manufacturing plants collapsing with thousands of job losses is about the last image Labour would want to take into a general election campaign.
Nick Assinder
BBC News website political correspondent

Politicians of every hue may be worried about voter apathy at the forthcoming election - but there is no shortage of people willing to have a flutter on the outcome.
Finlo Rohrer
BBC News reporter

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