Colleagues back Brown as challenge falls flat

BRITISH PRIME minister Gordon Brown was last night supported by Cabinet colleagues following a demand by two senior former ministers for a party leadership election to be held within days.

However, the crisis, though it has ebbed, is another damaging blow to Mr Brown just months before an election which is expected to take place in May, and was seized upon by the Conservatives as further evidence of Labour’s disarray.

The decision by the two former ministers, Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt, to call for a secret ballot infuriated most Labour MPs, with one describing it as being akin “to a death wish”.

In their letter to colleagues, the two said Labour was “deeply divided” and that the leadership issue has to be sorted “once and for all”, or else it would threaten the party’s efforts to win a fourth term in office.

“There is a risk otherwise that the persistent background briefing and grumbling could continue up to and possibly through the election campaign, affecting our ability to concentrate all of our energies on getting our real message across,” they said.

But, the coup attempt failed to gain momentum despite a febrile atmosphere among Labour MPs in the Commons yesterday afternoon, though leading Labour figures were slow to come to Mr Brown’s public aid.

Last night there were indications that some of Mr Brown’s enemies had expected up to three senior members of the Cabinet to come out and declare support for the election call, but this did not happen.

The news of the letter emerged shortly before lunchtime after the prime minister had enjoyed one of his best performances yet against Conservative Party leader David Cameron during prime minister’s question time.

However, business secretary Lord Mandelson’s opposition to the action did not come until after 3pm – and then it came only by way of text message, and without a ringing endorsement of Mr Brown’s leadership.

Lord Mandelson said: “No one should over-react to this initiative. It is not led by members of the government.

“No one has resigned from the government. The prime minister continues to have the support of his colleagues and we should carry on government business as usual.”

Long-time Brown ally schools secretary Ed Balls said Mr Hoon and Ms Hewitt did not speak for “the vast majority” of Labour MPs:

“If people thought this was the right time for us to turn inwards the country would think we had lost our marbles,” he declared.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, who has clashed with Mr Brown over economic policy, said: “As far as I’m concerned we should be concentrating on the business of government and getting through the recession.

“The PM and I met this afternoon and we discussed how we take forward economic policies to secure the recovery. I won’t be deflected from that,” he said, though again his comments were seen as the minimum required to help end the crisis.

Even opponents of Mr Brown believe that a leadership election now is simply impractical, while there is no evidence that home secretary Alan Johnson, or former cabinet minister James Purnell – two of the most likely replacements – could do any better than Mr Brown in the upcoming election.

Mr Hoon and Ms Hewitt, who both served in Cabinet under Mr Brown’s predecessor, Mr Tony Blair, insisted that they had decided to send the letter only after they spoke together on their return to the House of Commons this week.

However, sources close to the prime minister were privately blaming former home secretary Charles Clarke, who last week wrote to colleagues to complain that Mr Brown lacked the “killer instinct” necessary for leadership.

Some Brown loyalists were scathing in their criticism. Geraldine Smith MP accused Mr Hoon and Ms Hewitt of having produced “a coward’s charter” and said “the ten, or twenty” MPs who would support it were “spineless”.

“What saddens me is that they seem too stupid to understand what a good job (Gordon Brown) has been doing.

“People like Charles Clarke have become joke-figures. They are not taken seriously anymore,” she said.

Both Mr Hoon and Ms Hewitt will retire as MPs this year, though Mr Hoon is known to have been disappointed that he was not appointed as the United Kingdom’s EU Commissioner late last year.