UK:BRITISH PRIME minister Gordon Brown was under fresh pressure last night after a Scottish office minister quit the government and challenged him to "take the bull by the horns" and allow Labour's leadership debate to run its course.
Senior cabinet colleagues including Jack Straw, Alistair Darling and Alan Johnson had earlier rallied to give the embattled prime minister vital breathing space as he prepares for next week's Manchester conference performance now deemed critical to his survival prospects.
Mr Brown had also won a technical victory over the dozen or so Labour MPs seeking to force a leadership contest when the party's ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) refused their request for the issue of nomination papers.
A legal battle remains possible in the dispute over party rules which seem to require the formality of an annual renomination and confirmation of the party leader where there is no vacancy. However, party chair Dianne Hayter insisted that, while Labour was in government, a leadership election would only be held if requested by a majority of the party conference on a card vote.
"Only Labour MPs can trigger the process and the NEC is confident that most MPs know their responsibilities under the rules."
The leadership's interpretation is that the process could only be triggered by 71 MPs seeking a contest in support of an alternative candidate - a task well-beyond those MPs hoping to bring the anti-Brown challenge to the boil.
The resignation of Scottish minister David Cairns, however - and the reluctance of senior ministers to criticise directly those calling publicly for a contest - merely underlined the belief that the Manchester conference may postpone rather than resolve the question over Mr Brown's leadership.
In a robust resignation letter, the relatively unknown Mr Cairns told the prime minister it was "hardly credible" to go on denying that "the issue of leadership and direction are being discussed and argued over" throughout the party. Mr Cairns was formerly a research assistant to MP Siobhain McDonagh, who was sacked as a government whip at the weekend.
However, the departing minister said he had counselled Ms McDonagh and others against when they decided to request nomination papers - while suggesting his decision to resign had been spurred by the party leadership's reaction to that initiative.
"Rather than seizing the opportunity to open out to a broader party membership a discussion that is being held in private," Mr Cairns told the prime minister, "our response as a government has been to suggest that these were the actions of a tiny number of disaffected people who have taken leave of their senses, are part of some larger plot and are entirely unrepresentative of the parliamentary Labour Party.
"In any event the debate is now on. The issue of leadership and direction are being discussed and argued over, and to go on denying it is barely credible . . . To that end I believe that the time has come to take the bull by the horns and allow a leadership debate to run its course."
In a further worrying development for Mr Brown it was reported that work and pensions secretary James Purnell told a London debate: "It would be stretching credulity to pretend these conversations aren't happening in the Labour Party because they clearly are."