PM takes to streets in role of challenger

John Major is approaching the campaign trail like the challenger against the prime ministerial Tony Blair. His opening trip to Luton on Monday showed that he is at home roughing it on the street.

One seasoned television presenter said: "Alistair Campbell has told Tony not to make eye contact with us. He stares straight ahead and sails past. He's been told it's not prime ministerial to do door-steps [off-the-cuff interviews]; Major does them all the time."

Mr Major knows he has to cause a stir; Mr Blair knows he has to avoid it. If he is to come from behind, a trip yesterday to the workshops of McLaren, the Formula One racing team, showed Mr Major that the place he should be cutting up rough is Tory headquarters in Smith Square.

The visit started promisingly enough. The theme this week is "British excellence", journalists were told on the coach to the McLaren plant in Woking, Surrey. Mr Major would see the British-built McLaren car which won the Australian Grand Prix at the weekend with its British driver, David Coulthard.

A winning racing car, fired up, and raring to go with its British driver at the wheel, would have been irresistible to the lunchtime television news. In the event, the car had been put up on two steel trestles in a high-tech maintenance bay. It had been stripped of its wheels; and there were red stickers saying "Sun" on the wing mirrors. The man from the Sun (backs Blair) was well-pleased.

McLaren may be world-beaters, but as a photo-opportunity, the racing car without wheels was a dead duck, shot to pieces with metaphors. "The wheels have dropped off the wagon," said the man from the Sun.

As he left, Mr Major faced the cameras for a "door step", brushing aside the Sun's endorsement for Tony Blair, and insisting like McLaren, that he will come from behind to win.

His words were nearly drowned out by a train on a line a few hundred yards away. It was operated by South West Trains, the company which has given the Government's privatisation programme a bad name by slashing services.

He will be back on the campaign trail today, visiting a public school in the Midlands with assisted places to highlight Tory education policies. There will be more visits to factories run by Tory-supporting businessmen, to challenge Mr Blair's ability to woo the business vote. And there will be set-piece rallies with Jeffrey Archer, the novelist, acting as the minder and warm-up act.

Security surrounding a Tory election rally at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 4 April has been put on full alert for a possible IRA attack after the date and location was published. The security risks surrounding Mr Major's tour were highlighted by the near riot in Luton on Monday, where he opened the campaign with a speech from his soap box.

The Major Battle Bus will be stopping more often than it did in 1992 for street meetings in this campaign. The tour, accompanied by Lord Archer, Howell James, his policy adviser, and Sheila Gunn, his press officer, will take in the West Country, where the Liberal Democrats are strong, and the Midlands, where Mr Major has been wooing the Asian vote. The key battleground will be the Tory marginals, but this time, his strategists are targeting Labour's heartlands, including Merseyside, to take the attack to Labour-controlled councils.

There are only two days left until the registration deadline for votinmg in the elction. Electoral registration offices of councils around the country will be open until the close of business tomorrow.

To register, potential voters must be able to show proof of an address (from a gas or phone bill, for example) which dates back to October 1996.