THE general apathy over the election seems to have passed Bolton West by as the candidates battle for a weathervane seat that could decide the result of the election.

If patrician old-Etonian Tom Sackville is ousted by energetic young New Labour candidate Ruth Kelly, then Tony Blair is in 10 Downing Street.

This knowledge has concentrated minds wonderfully and there is much more of a buzz on the streets about the election in Bolton West than the rest of the town.

Mrs Kelly's campaign team are enthusiastic, efficient and organised.

Although they deny complacency, you can tell that in their hearts they think they have won.

Their confidence shines through their fresh faced enthusiasm as they contemplate their pregnant 28-year-old candidate repeating Ann Taylor's stunning success at the age of just 27 in October 1974.

Mrs Kelly is almost an identikit New Labour candidate.

A woman, an Oxford educated high-flyer, a former Guardian journalist now a Bank of England economist, she is clearly fully-committed to "The Project" as Blair insiders refer to New Labour.

She is a formidable campaigner with a formidable campaigning machine behind her - much of it drafted in from other safer seats in the big push for victory on May 1.

Health, education and unemployment are the main national issues coming up on the doorstep for Labour.

Cutting NHS bureaucracy, scrapping the assisted places scheme to pay for reducing primary school classes to below 30 and using the windfall tax to get hundreds of local young jobless back to work are the campaign pitch.

Red Moss and the Lever Park proposals loom large on the local front. Mr Sackville's sudden and high-profile U-turn over the Horwich tip plan is portrayed to voters as cynical electioneering while his failure to prevent opencast mining going ahead in the area is cited as evidence of his lack of influence on issues that matter as more such coal extraction is proposed nearby.

But her arrival in the seat has allowed Mr Sackville to reverse his normal election ploy of portraying himself as the class act against a variety of local Labour plodders.

Now he - opportunistically, perhaps - classes himself as the local and Mrs Kelly as the carpet bagger sent by the Blair high command. At least Mrs Taylor was a Bolton lass.

He stresses that in the case of Red Moss his intervention was crucial - and can take pleasure in that it split the local Labour Party.

His campaigning style is relaxed, playing slightly-tongue in cheek on his aristocratic background for all its worth.

Mr Sackville knows that the challenge presented by feisty Referendum Party candidate Glenda Frankl Slater is very much to his vote.

She is attractive, lively and far from the gloomy Euro-obsessive voters might expect to find standing for Sir James Goldsmith's single issue party.

Therefore Mr Sackville has gone as close as he dare to openly defying Mr Major on the single currency and stressed in his literature that he is "THE Eurosceptic candidate''.

When the older type of Tory voter to whom the specre of creeping Eurofederalism is a real issue raised it with him, Mr Sackville is polished and reassuring about his position and the Tory party's growing hostility to any such drift.

Last week's hardening of John Major's position on the single currency and move towards a free vote on the issue will help him keep some malcontents in the Tory fold.

As he strides round the posher end of his constituency the recognition factor is high.

As first a Junior Health Minister and then a Home Office Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, he believes increased media attention has boosted his local standing.

He points to his key role in getting tough mandatory sentences for repeat drug dealers and his own local war against pushers using social housing for their trafficking as evidence of how his roles as a Minister and local MP coincide.

Mr Sackville sees law and order as a potential vote-winner in view of his current job. The real local candidate is Liberal Democrat Barbara Ronson - who is mounting a vigorous campaign to up last time's 7,529 vote.

Grass-roots Bolton issues, Mr Sackville's U-turns and ambitions are all grist to her mill as are Mrs Kelly's credentials as a New Labour storm-trooper parachuted into the constituency.

A former SDP member turned very effective Liberal democrat councillor, her real aims are on boosting support for her party across the constituency with an eye on future council elections.

But she will certainly have an impact - as will the fifth candidate Soclialist Labour's 48-year-old unemployed dinner lady Dot Kelly standing for Socialist Labour with strong attacks on opencast and New Labour's desertion of the working class at the heart of her campaign.

With the transfer of Halliwell ward and 3,000 Labour voters to Bolton North-East, Mr Sackville's real majority is closer to 4,000 than 1992's final figure of 1.079.

He knows he faces a real struggle to hold on but is a determined fighter with a very canny election agent in James Stevens who is reputed to know every political trick in the book - and a few besides.

It is no wonder that the voters of Bolton West are taking a keen interest in what could be the crucial seat that reveals the result of the election.

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