Tony Blair yesterday called on voters to move beyond Thatcherism and vote for schools and hospitals.

Speaking in the key Labour marginal of Birmingham Yardley, the prime minister said the country had to decide whether it wanted to move "forward or back".

"For us the future is not something to be afraid of but to embrace and shape as a confident, forward looking nation. For the Conservatives the past, and in particular the 1980s, is a happy retreat from facing up to the tough challenges of today," he said.

The PM was scathing about the Conservative party's reaction to their 1997 election defeat.

"They didn't learn anything from their defeat at all. The Conservatives are actually a more extreme version than anything they have offered before," he said.

Despite claims on Tuesday that he was the true heir of Margaret Thatcher, Blair claimed that William Hague wanted to resurrect the policies of the 1980s.

"It is no coincidence Margaret Thatcher is out again campaigning for Mr Hague today. Thatcherism is the place where the Conservative Party is stuck. A party that is so firmly stuck in the past cannot be trusted with the country's future," he said.

The Labour leader said that Britain under Thatcher had left parts of society behind and said he wanted to give everyone a "fair chance in life".

"This election really, really matters because it can, if the people decide, mark a real and historic turning point - a clean break with the politics of the 80s, which left so many of our people behind," said Blair.

The agenda pursued by Margaret Thatcher was not all bad, said Blair. But he said her governments had "four fundamental failings".

He claimed her government had presided over economic instability, under-investment in public services, social division and isolation in Europe.

He claimed that the Conservatives under William Hague would encounter the same problems. "The Conservatives have repeated those four failings, added to them, accentuated them, and have campaigned up and down the country for them, campaigned to take Britain back to the 80s," said Blair.

Lady Thatcher dismissed the prime minister's comments saying: "Most people have already moved beyond the Eighties, so they don't need telling, particularly as the Nineties have gone by too."

Despite today's ICM poll, the Times reveals that Millbank aides are happy that the campaign is going to plan with carefully scripted outbursts of Blair anger at media speculation at a Labour landslide victory. Blair will today spend the campaign's last hours campaigning in the East Midlands, North Wales, Derbyshire, the Scottish borders and the North East.

Meanwhile Labour is planning what the Mirror describes as its "biggest-ever blitz on voter apathy" as it prepares to target millions of people with phone calls, leaflets, letters, emails and text messages urging them to vote.