TONY BLAIR and William Hague returned to the region last night, spending the final hours of the election campaign issuing rallying cries to supporters on home ground.

And as both men issued impassioned appeals to their respective party faithful in their Sedgefield and Richmond constituencies, final opinion polls depicted Labour maintaining a substantial lead over the Tories on the eve of the election.

The Prime Minister, speaking at Trimdon Labour Club during half-time in the England-Greece football match, urged people to come out and vote in an election that he said "matters desperately".

Mr Blair said: "Tomorrow is the day that the British people take the power in their own hands. It is not decided by the pundits or the poll figures of the media. It is not decided by people like me."

Appealing beyond the constituency to the whole of the country, he told them not to let the cynics - who say there is no choice - win.

"We are in a place that has traditionally voted Labour for many, many decades, but there's no separation between so-called heartlands and the new areas of support that we are seeking.

"Whether it is people here in County Durham, or in every part of the country, they want the same things."

Meanwhile, Tory leader William Hague returned to Richmond last night to be greeted by tumultuous applause.

In a rousing speech to a packed town hall, he had the relaxed and happy appearance of a man on the verge of victory, despite the opinion polls, as he ended his 20,000-mile campaign tour of the UK.

He joked: "It's great to be home - you remember me, I'm the man who has accompanied Mrs Hague round the country."

And he urged: "Let's get to it. Let's win a victory. Let's give the people back their country."

He spoke for about 20 minutes attacking the Labour Government's record on rural issues.

"We have never had a Government so utterly ignorant of the countryside," he said, to cries of "Here, here".

"We have seen how it has been let down. We have seen it for years, even before foot-and-mouth we have seen the rural economy decline and we have got an opportunity to turn that round."

"It's great to be home," he said. "I could not have done this campaign without you, my constituents, who I have been away from. I believe that, thanks to your hard work, we will have a good result."

He added: "We have been on the road for 30 days and had the most tremendous campaign, a successful campaign, and we are going to have a very good day tomorrow.

"Because the people of this country share our instincts, we know that if we work hard enough and get our message across well enough, we can win."

Never before have the two main party leaders faced each other in such close proximity in a General Election, with the Prime Minister's constituency even bordering the Leader of the Opposition's stronghold, in the form of the River Tees between Croft and Hurworth.

Meanwhile, Charles Kennedy, speaking from the campaign trail in Scotland, maintained that the Liberal Democrats could form a credible official opposition to Labour.

A final Mori poll for The Times last night showed Labout had slipped three points from last week to 45 per cent, while the Tories remained unchanged on 30 per cent.

The Liberal Democrats were up two points on 18 per cent.

A Gallup poll for The Daily Telegraph put the parties at 48, 32 and 16 points respectively.

Read more about the Election here.