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SYDNEY - A long-serving prime minister pressured by poor polls and an ambitious treasurer flags his intention to retire, consigning his final term to "lame duck" status ... John Howard could be following in Tony Blair's footsteps.
The former British leader has already travelled the path proposed by Mr Howard, and found it an uncomfortable way to end his political marathon.
More than that, Mr Blair has admitted it might have been a mistake.
When he visited Melbourne for the 2006 Commonwealth Games, he told a local radio interviewer that after a decade in power "you are going to get people saying it should be time for a change, or when are you going, or who's taking over".
"Now, it was an unusual thing for me to say but people kept asking me the question so I decided to answer it. Maybe that was a mistake."
Mr Howard has held office for more than a decade, too.
Like Tony Blair, he has already announced that if he wins the looming federal election it will be his last as leader.
He has gone further than that.
Whereas Mr Blair pledged to serve a full term, then reneged on that pledge, Mr Howard has been up-front with voters.
He has said that if elected he will at some point make way, in all likelihood for his Treasurer Peter Costello, just as Mr Blair eventually did for his aggressively restless Chancellor Gordon Brown.
But that may not be enough to make his ride any smoother if he wins a fifth term.
So what can Mr Howard expect, based on the Blair experience?
For a start, Labor campaign ads punching home the message: "Vote Howard, Get Costello", just as Britain's Conservatives correctly proclaimed: "Vote Blair, Get Brown."
Mr Blair recorded an historic win at the 2005 poll, becoming only the second British prime minister after Margaret Thatcher to win three successive terms, and the first Labour leader to do so in the party's 105-year history.
But there was a massive swing against him, and he was instantly derided by newspapers as the "lame duck PM who waddled across the line".
Mr Blair discovered, as Mr Howard may discover in his turn, that the nation quickly became preoccupied with when he would go rather than what he was doing.
The question of the succession, and when it would take place, dogged his every move and utterance.
His position became progressively weaker as opponents pushed for his early removal.
The uncertainty caused angst and disquiet in his own party, and raised questions about his authority to make crucial decisions if he was stepping down.
Six months after winning the election, Blair cabinet minister David Blunkett resigned in a scandal over his business affairs, and then-Conservative leader Michael Howard said the "seepage" of the prime minister's authority had turned into a "haemorrhage".
When Mr Blair announced last year he would be stepping down, London's Daily Telegraph newspaper denounced the "shameful display of raw ambition from the chancellor and abject timidity from the prime minister".
"How humiliating that he (Mr Blair) should be made to jump through this hoop to satisfy the demands of his power-hungry chancellor.
"If we did not have a lame-duck prime minister before yesterday, we have one now.
"Any leader worth his salt would have faced down Mr Brown and invited him to leave the government if he did not accept the prime minister's authority.
"That Mr Blair was unable to do so is ample testimony to the extent to which his power has ebbed away."
In March this year, shortly before he pulled the plug, Mr Blair's plans to renew Britain's Trident nuclear weapons system sparked the biggest backbench revolt in the House of Commons since the Iraq war.
Baroness Betty Boothroyd, the former Labour speaker, said Mr Blair had no alternative but to rely on opposition votes.
"He's losing authority and he's now becoming a lame duck, I'm sorry to say."
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell said the vote was "a humiliation for the prime minister".
Mr Howard has gone further than Mr Blair by declaring he won't serve another full term as leader.
He is standing on a retirement platform, asking voters to elect him in the certain knowledge that he will quit.
As University of Birmingham senior lecturer Chris Game said: "I would have thought anyone looking at the Blair model would realise that he came to regret it and it left him in a position of very substantial weakness for most of the 2005 parliament."
If there are lessons to be learned from Mr Blair's final days, Mr Howard doesn't seem to have been listening.
He may have reason to ponder philosopher George Santayana's maxim that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
- AAP
