Blair to hand over to Brown today

London: Removal men packed furniture and boxes into a van outside Prime Minister Tony Blair's Downing Street home on Wednesday as he prepared to leave office and hand
power to Treasury chief Gordon Brown.

The incoming leader, who for many lacks the charisma of his predecessor, must woo Britons by shaking off the taint of backing the hugely unpopular Iraq war. With promises of restoring trust in government, he is planning to sweep aside the Blair era after a decade waiting for the country's top job.

Brown, a 56-year-old Scotsman, will seek to head off a challenge from a revived opposition Conservative party. Polls already point to a "Brown bounce," with one survey
putting his Labour party ahead of its rivals for the first time since October.

US President George W. Bush paid a final tribute to his ally and will later call Blair's successor with congratulations.

"Tony's had a great run and history will judge him kindly," Bush told Britain's The Sun tabloid in remarks published Wednesday. "I've heard he's been called Bush's poodle. He's bigger than that."

Bush is thought to have been instrumental in winning Blair his new role as envoy to the Quartet of Mideast peace mediators.

Irish leader Bertie Ahern said Blair he told him his new role would be "tricky," but said he wanted to focus on peacemaking.

After a final weekly session taking questions from fellow lawmakers on Wednesday, Blair will take the 1.5-kilometer ride with wife Cherie from his Downing Street office to Buckingham Palace in a chauffeur-driven, armor-plated limousine known as Pegasus.

Once he tenders his resignation, Brown will be summoned to Queen Elizabeth II's private quarters, where she will formally confirm him as prime minister during a closed-doors audience. He will then travel to northern England, where he has called a meeting with officials in the area he represents to reportedly resign as a British legislator.

Brown, meanwhile, will be leaving the palace, pulling shut the heavy door of the leader's limousine and beginning the job he's waited 13 years to hold.

He, his wife Sarah and two young sons already live in the private quarters at No. 10 Downing Street - the prime minister's official residence - having switched homes with
Blair's larger family, who needed the roomier apartment next door in No. 11, Brown's official residence.