A whirlwind of problems to hit Britain's Tony Blair has prompted new questions about how long he can hold on to his job, particularly as his Labour party faces a tough time in local elections next week.

He faced fresh calls to resign yesterday after three senior cabinet ministers floundered in political and personal crises in one of the government's darkest weeks.

The latest blow came on Wednesday when Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, 67, admitted to tabloid revelations that he had cheated on his wife by having a two-year affair with a civil servant 24 years his junior.

The shock admission, coupled with pages of revealing newspaper photographs, added to the problems plaguing Blair's administration after the Home Office revealed 24 hours earlier that it had failed to consider whether more than 1,000 foreign convicts should be deported at the end of their sentences.

Instead the criminals, who included murderers, rapists and child molesters, were set free in Britain, prompting an apology from Home Secretary Charles Clarke for the blunder.

Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt also found herself in hot water. She was repeatedly booed and slow-handclapped during a televised address to the Royal College of Nursing because of anger over the government's health reforms. The heckling eventually forced Hewitt to cut short her speech.

Amid the crisis, Blair met his cabinet yesterday for an interaction that his official spokesman called "a cabinet (meeting) like any other".

The government's admission that it had failed to consider deportation for the prisoners was discussed, but there was no mention of Prescott's affair, said the spokesman, who briefs reporters on condition of anonymity.

The mix of incompetence, sleaze and sex scandals evoked the scent of decay which hung over the dying days of Britain's last Conservative government, voted out of office in 1997.

But analysts said Blair's problems were not yet as severe as those of the Conservatives in the 1990s. "The big crucial difference is that the opposition's still not terribly popular," said John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University in Glasgow.

PHOTO CAPTION

Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair seen speaking to journalists during his monthly news conference at 10 Downing Street in London in this April 24, 2006 file photo. (REUTERS)