"HI, it's Tony here, please vote for me," says the voice at the other end of the phone.

But, of course, it isn't. It is TV impressionist Rory Bremner, and he doesn't believe the people of Sedgefield should be voting for Tony Blair.

Yesterday, Mr Bremner became the latest celebrity to throw his weight behind anti-war candidate Reg Keys.

"The events of the past 24 hours have shown that Mr Blair didn't trust his cabinet to know the full facts behind the legal case," he said, in his own voice.

"He played fast and loose with the intelligence and now we know he played fast and loose with the legal advice. So what we have is a Prime Minister who assembles the facts to fit the policy and not the other way round. That's an abuse of power.

"I don't think he can be trusted and it is necessary to punish him for that abuse of power."

Mr Bremner believes Sedgefield can provide the country with what it wants: a Labour government without Mr Blair as Prime Minister.

Mr Bremner said: "There is no appetite for a Conservative government and people don't think that the Lib Dems are strong enough, but the Sedgefield solution is a Labour government with Mr Blair removed. That seems to me a very satisfactory result.

"The only people who are going to win in Sedgefield are Mr Blair or a candidate all the other parties unite around."

Mr Bremner believes Mr Keys, whose son Tom was a Red Cap soldier killed in Iraq, should be the unity candidate attempting to overturn Mr Blair's 17,713 majority.

Mr Keys' campaign is being financed by U2 producer Brian Eno and by former anti-sleaze MP Martin Bell. This weekend the novelist Frederick Forsyth will lend his support.

John Burton, Mr Blair's agent, said: "In our canvassing, Iraq hasn't been uppermost in people's minds. It is education, the Health Service and the jobs situation people worry about.

"Everybody will sympathise with Mr Keys on the doorstep but at the end of the day they will have to think which candidate will affect their lives.

"Mr Keys cannot do anything for the people of Sedgefield as a single candidate, but the Prime Minister can with things like the minimum wage, family tax credits, cutting hospital waiting lists - these things directly influence people's lives.

"The people of the North-East are better off than they were seven years ago and their lives have changed for the better.

"Tony Blair would not go to war unless he believed all the information he was getting. I have worked with him for 23 years and I would trust him with my life."

Mr Bremner, who calls himself "a woolly Liberal", said he had supported Mr Blair in the past.

"I started as a believer in Tony Blair and then became an agnostic and now I wonder if there is a Tony Blair," he said.

"In 1997 he was capable of uniting the country and asking questions of it, and there have been a number of achievements under New Labour.

"Mr Blair's like the girl with the curl: when he's good, he's very, very good, but when he's bad, he's horrid."

Mr Bremner said he believed new Labour was "rotting from the head down". He was particularly concerned at the way public finance initiatives were taking control in the health and education services.

"Mr Blair has more in common with the conglomerates that are running our public services than with the doctors and nurses who work in them," he said.

"I think it is important that Labour changes direction. At the moment, the only direction is the one he wants to take when he wakes up in the morning."

Mr Bremner said Saddam Hussein retaining power in Iraq was a separate issue to the way the war was waged.

"Even if you thought the war was a good idea, the way he went about it was an abuse of power, because he kept the Cabinet out of it and drove a coach and horses through the United Nations, British intelligence and international law.

"I always do my shows without fear or favour, but I think this is an exceptional case. It is a combination of democratic forces and political scandal so it is worth a punt on an independent like Reg Keys."