TONY Blair signalled his determination to stay at No 10 yesterday when he told Labour's conference "the battle is not yet won" to change Britain for the challenges of the 21st Century.

In a hard-hitting speech that challenged his "Old Labour" critics on the conference floor, the Prime Minister admitted that eight years in office could bring fatigue.

But he insisted it also brought the experience necessary to go further and faster to meet the economic challenge of China and India and to introduce choice of school and hospital.

The 50-minute speech, which was received less warmly than previous conference triumphs, was seen as Mr Blair's statement of intent to remain in his job until at least 2008.

The Prime Minister has been dogged this week by mutterings that he is running out of steam, while a restless Gordon Brown was virtually anointed as his successor by Cabinet colleagues.

But the speech made clear that, far from planning to quit Downing Street within 12 months, Mr Blair was determined to "step up to a new mark a changing world is setting for us".

He told delegates: "Values don't change, but times do. And now, as before, our values have to be applied anew in changing times."

Labour legends including Denis Healey, Tony Benn, Michael Foot and Jack Jones were praised for their brilliance, but criticised for failing "to see change coming".

The Prime Minister has already vowed to ignore an expected defeat today on a trade union resolution to suspend the expansion of the private sector's role in the NHS.

A powerful passage on Iraq, which drew no dissent, linked its terror directly to September 11 and insisted the struggle was striving to allow Iraqis to enjoy "the same democratic way the British people do".

Defending the proposed new terror laws, he insisted his primary duty was to protect law-abiding people from attack, not to protect the innocent from being wrongly convicted.

Mr Blair said the third-term agenda would open up a "new frontier of the welfare state" by providing affordable, "wrap-around" childcare from 8am to 6pm at schools.

The NHS reforms were on course to deliver maximum waiting times of 18 weeks and education proposals would offer greater parental choice.

Pensions reform would offer "a simple, easy way for people to save" and there would be new energy proposals which, he hinted, would include a new wave of nuclear power stations.

A "radical extension" of police and local authority powers to hand out on-the-spot fines would tackle binge-drinking, drug-dealing and organised crime.

He hailed New Labour as a party of "change-makers", insisting: "If we do that, the fourth election can be won and the future will be ours to share."

* Tony Benn was under observation in hospital last night after falling and bumping his head during the conference. Last night, his condition was described as comfortable.

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