Downing Street aides to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are seeking to take advantage of a last minute surge of Labour MPs who are standing down ahead of the general election.

A total of 41 Labour MPs are not standing again - the latest being Iain Coleman, MP for Hammersmith and Fulham, who announced yesterday that he intended to leave parliament because of poor health.

Meanwhile, two Conservative candidates have had to resign over potentially embarrassing remarks.

Adrian Hilton resigned as Conservative candidate for Slough following comments on the Roman Catholic agenda of the European Union.

The Tories also announced that their candidate in Blair's Sedgefield constituency, Danny Kruger, had quit after calling for the "creative destruction" of public service bureaucracies.