British Prime Minister Tony Blair looked set to bow to intense pressure from disgruntled loyalists yesterday and lay out a timetable for his departure within a year after almost a decade in office

With Labour Party colleagues running scared about Blair’s growing unpopularity, a junior minister and seven government aides resigned on Wednesday after calling on him to step aside.

Any chance of Blair overseeing a stable and orderly handover to his finance minister and expected successor Gordon Brown was evaporating with reports that the two were locked in a furious shouting match in fiery meetings on Wednesday.

Blair’s popularity has tumbled in opinion polls after government scandals over sleaze and mismanagement were compounded by controversy over the wars in Iraq and Lebanon.

Blair, facing his toughest crisis in his nine years of power, was widely expected to cave in to demands from rebels and outline his departure plans in detail at an early afternoon photo call in London.

Yesterday, the party’s parliamentary manager Jacqui Smith said: “I expect ... the Prime Minister may well confirm that.”

Environment Minister David Miliband, a loyal Blair ally who has been tipped as a future prime minister, has said Blair would be gone within a year and Labour needed Brown in charge.“Either we have a smooth transition or you have a train crash,” Miliband told weekly the New Statesman.“What I believe is that we need more than a smooth transition to Gordon Brown – we need an energizing, refreshing transition to Gordon Brown,” he said.

But with the mutiny showing no signs of subsiding, Blair’s chances of lasting even until next summer looked much slimmer.

<B>“Endgame”</B>

Ministers were trotted out on morning talk shows to try and quell the feverish political speculation with Communities Minister Ruth Kelly saying “What we have seen over the last few days is neither stable nor orderly.” Blair has already pledged not to fight the next election, which is due in 2009.

But any hopes of a smooth handover looked to be dashed with yesterday’s newspapers full of doomsday headlines such as “The Endgame” and lurid reports of Blair and Brown at daggers drawn.

“Labour paralyzed as the poison spreads” was the banner headline in the Times. Junior Defense Minister Tom Watson was the most senior Labour lawmaker to resign on Wednesday. He was followed by seven government aides, members of parliament who had previously been Blair loyalists.

Amid fears that government could face paralysis in a long period of Labour Party bickering, party chief Hazel Blears said: “We remember those bad old days when we spent so long arguing amongst ourselves, we forgot to fight the Conservatives.”

Conservative leader David Cameron, whose youthful image has sent him into a comfortable opinion poll lead over Blair, said the Labour government was “in meltdown.” Margaret Thatcher, one of his most illustrious predecessors, was ruthlessly toppled by a party mutiny when colleagues felt she had become an electoral liability.

Now Blair faces the prospect of suffering the same fate.