The last full week of the campaign, and Iraq has finally emerged as an election issue. But how much damage could it inflict on Tony Blair? Nick Morrison reports.

IT'S the elephant in the living room: the one fact that can't be avoided but is nevertheless being ignored. Iraq has been the most contentious issue over the last four years, perhaps even the last 40, but has scarcely merited a mention in the election campaign.

Until now. Less than a fortnight to polling day, and the war on Saddam has reared its ugly - at least for Tony Blair - head. Publication at the weekend of a leaked memo which showed the Government's chief law officer had doubts over the legality of the invasion has propelled it to the top of the agenda.

The Liberal Democrats, as the only major party to oppose the war, have sought to capitalise, with leader Charles Kennedy calling for voters to turn the election into a referendum on the war. The Tories, whose position is more equivocal, still hope to benefit from those who want to teach the Prime Minister a lesson. Mr Blair, for his part, having long since abandoned hopes that he could draw a line under the decision to go to war in Iraq, has been forced onto the defensive.

But all the signs are that the Iraq war will not prove to be an issue which swings the election, according to Martin Farr, politics lecturer at Newcastle University. The LibDems may hope to appeal to disgruntled Labour supporters, but all those likely to defect have probably already done so, and opinion polls are still showing a healthy lead for Mr Blair, putting him on course for an historic third term.

"My hunch is it won't actually matter. The Tories supported the policy, and while the Liberal Democrats need something positive because they have been a little lacklustre, they don't really have anything else to offer," Dr Farr says.

Although many Labour supporters have been deeply unhappy over the Iraq war, ultimately the extra money being put into schools and hospitals will win them over, he says. Indeed, one of Labour's responses to criticism over Iraq is that an attempt to punish the Prime Minister for the war would put at risk the giant strides made in funding public services over the last four years.

But the lack of an "Iraq Effect" could come as a surprise to future generations.

"Historians will come to think of it as extraordinary that perhaps the most divisive issue since Suez is not a factor in the General Election," says Dr Farr. While the Conservatives helped expunge the memory of that ill-fated 1956 expedition by changing their leader, no such move has been necessary for Labour.

"It shows that the British are very insular - the island mentality comes to the fore during elections," Dr Farr says. "This election is all about domestic issues rather than the world situation. Apart from a few people, Iraq doesn't really affect anybody, whereas health and education do.

"People ask why politicians don't talk about foreign affairs, but if foreign affairs were important, politicians would talk about them. Politicians are the most sensitive group of people, and if people cared about foreign affairs it would be prevalent in the campaign."

Opinion polls back up this view. Private polling conducted for the Labour Party last month showed that 29 per cent named public services as the most important issue; just three per cent said Iraq, and when voters are asked to rank issues in order of importance, Iraq consistently appears near the bottom.

And for all their indignation, the opposition parties know this only too well. Has anybody seen Michael Ancram and Menzies Campbell lately? The Conservative and LibDem foreign affairs spokesmen have been almost invisible during the campaign so far, and with good reason.

But if the election is not going to hinge on Iraq, it does not mean the war will have a negligible effect on the result. It's just that its importance lies less in the war itself, which is history now after all, but in what it symbolises.

Both Tories and LibDems aim to use Iraq to highlight the issue of trust in the Prime Minister, and this could yet prove significant on May 5. Dr Farr believes this will be less in increasing the vote for the opposition parties, than in encouraging more people to stay at home.

"It is going to reinforce the view that politicians are all crooked and that is what is going to bring turn-out down," he says. "People may much prefer Tony Blair to Michael Howard or Charles Kennedy as prime minister, but this is going to further the idea of politics being dishonest. Iraq will damage trust, and trust will damage turn-out, and that will further erode party membership and faith in the party system.

'This election will be the turn-out election. The single most important issue for the Government is getting the vote out, because a low turn-out will damage Labour enormously."

Disillusion over Iraq may keep many Labour supporters at home, as may a belief that the result is a foregone conclusion. Ironically, by urging voters to send a message to the Prime Minister, Tory leader Michael Howard is fuelling the view that a Labour victory is certain, thereby making it more likely that people won't bother to turn out to vote.

And Labour's strategists know that it is particularly vulnerable to low turn-out. Studies show that Conservative-minded electors are more likely to vote than Labour supporters, and this year they have the added motivation of having something to oppose.

But even if, as seems likely, Mr Blair is returned to Downing Street, it is by no means certain that he can finally escape from the shadow of Iraq.

The direct consequence is in limiting his room for manoeuvre in foreign affairs. A prime minister who has been substantially more belligerent than his Conservative predecessors - with military action in Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Iraq behind him - will find it difficult to take his country into war again. Possible United States action against Iran will present him with an even more uncomfortable dilemma than he faced over Iraq.

But the more far-reaching, and for Mr Blair the more disturbing, effect will be in the judgement of posterity, says Dr Farr.

"Blair is likely to be remembered as a failed prime minister, who didn't deliver domestically and got sucked into this appalling foreign war," he says. He sees comparisons with US President Lyndon Johnson, whose radical domestic programme was derailed by controversy over the Vietnam war.

Ironically, this may encourage Mr Blair to stay in office longer than he should, as he attempts to rescue his reputation. But it is difficult to see what he could accomplish to prevent Iraq overshadowing his premiership. He may avoid being turfed out of office over Iraq, as Anthony Eden was over Suez, but it is easy to see a parallel. For Eden, Suez blighted an otherwise glittering career, and ensured he would be remembered as a failure. Mr Blair may yet come to see whatever else he has achieved being drowned, not in the waters of the Suez Canal, but by the lingering bad taste of his Iraq adventure.

"If I was Tony Blair I would be thinking I had squandered an awful lot," says Dr Farr. "And the most important thing he has squandered is good will."