UK's Blair sets May 2007 as departure date-media

LONDON, Sep 7 (Reuters) British Prime Minister Tony Blair will step down early in May next year after a revolt by former supporters, British media said today.

Sky Television, citing senior Labour Party members, said the embattled premier would quit on May 4, 2007 after a decade in office. The BBC also said he would go in early May.

Blair is expected to set out a timetable for his departure from office later on Thursday in an attempt to defuse a leadership crisis which has engulfed his ruling Labour Party.

With party colleagues running scared about Blair's growing unpopularity, a junior minister and seven government aides resigned yesterday after calling on him to step aside.

Any chance of Blair overseeing a stable handover to his finance minister and favoured successor Gordon Brown was evaporating with reports that the two were locked in a furious shouting match in fiery meetings yesterday.

Blair's popularity has tumbled in opinion polls after government scandals over sleaze and mismanagement were compounded by controversy over the wars in Iraq and Lebanon.

Environment Minister David Miliband, a loyal Blair ally who has been tipped as a future prime minister, has said Blair would be gone within a year and Labour needed Brown in charge.

''Either we have a smooth transition or you have a train crash,'' Miliband told weekly the New Statesman.

''What I believe is that we need more than a smooth transition to Gordon Brown -- we need an energising, refreshing transition to Gordon Brown,'' he said.

''ENDGAME'' Ministers were trotted out on morning talk shows to try to quell the feverish political speculation with Communities Minister Ruth Kelly saying ''What we have seen over the last few days is neither stable nor orderly.'' Blair has already pledged not to fight the next election, which is due in 2009.

But any hopes of a smooth handover looked to be dashed with today's newspapers full of doomsday headlines such as ''The Endgame'' and lurid reports of Blair and Brown at daggers drawn.

''Labour paralysed as the poison spreads'' was the banner headline in the Times.

Junior Defence Minister Tom Watson was the most senior Labour lawmaker to resign yesterday. He was followed by seven government aides who had previously been Blair loyalists.

Amid fears that government could face paralysis in a long period of Labour Party bickering, party chief Hazel Blears said: ''We remember those bad old days when we spent so long arguing amongst ourselves, we forgot to fight the Conservatives.'' Conservative leader David Cameron, whose youthful image has sent him into a comfortable opinion poll lead over Blair, said the Labour government was ''in meltdown''.

Margaret Thatcher, one of his most illustrious predecessors, was ruthlessly toppled by a party mutiny when colleagues felt she had become an electoral liability.

Now Blair faces the prospect of suffering the same fate.

REUTERS SP KN1535