Brown told to 'change or perish'

2008-05-24 23:01

London - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown faced speculation on Saturday that his disgruntled party could mount a leadership challenge, as senior figures warned him to change or perish.

Although only one Labour Party deputy broke ranks and publicly called for Brown to go after Thursday's devastating by-election defeat, reports said many in the ruling centre-left party wondered how much more they could take.

Brown's problems deepened when the main opposition Conservatives swept to victory in the previously safe Labour seat of Crewe and Nantwich in northwest England, with a mammoth swing of nearly 18%.

Labour deputy Graham Stringer, an outspoken critic of Brown, told the BBC it was time for a senior figure in the party to mount a challenge.

"Is it more damaging for the party to change the leader or cross our fingers and hope that things get better?" he asked.

Another outspoken Labour lawmaker, Frank Field, stopped short of calling for Brown's head but said the prime minister's cabinet lacked substance.

"The team needs to be rebuilt with some heavy hitters," he told Sky News.

'Fast losing support'

Other critics refused to be identified, but their message was clear - Brown is fast losing the support of his party, less than a year since he took over from Tony Blair.

One unnamed senior Labour figure told The Guardian newspaper: "People are not far away from thinking that we cannot win under Gordon Brown.

"We wish it was different from what it is. But it is hard to avoid looking at the facts."

The Times newspaper quoted cabinet sources as saying most ministers now doubted whether Labour could turn around its deficit in opinions polls with Brown in charge.

Senior ministers told the daily the party could not sit still and do nothing if it seemed to be heading towards certain defeat at a general election that must take place in the next two years.

The Sun newspaper quoted a cabinet minister as saying: "We have a collective responsibility to do the right thing by the party. We have big problems and they have to be sorted out."

But the process for ousting a Labour leader is lengthy and arduous, unless the cabinet tells a sitting prime minister his time is up, according to the Labour rule book.

Newspapers nevertheless listed potential leadership contenders, with Foreign Secretary David Miliband the 5/2 favourite, according to the Financial Times.

But Margaret Beckett, the former British foreign minister and a veteran Labour figure, said she did not "remotely" think Brown was finished.

Protest vote

The latest thrashing, hot on the heels of a disastrous showing in local elections on May 1, had been a protest vote from an electorate worried about the slowing economy, she said.

"They decided they wanted to send the government a clear message," Beckett told BBC television.

"There is absolutely nothing to say that provided we listen to the electorate, and learn from their clear desire to see a change of course, there's nothing whatsoever to say the result of the next general election is set."

While Conservative leader David Cameron hailed Thursday's election as the "end of New Labour", the term coined by Blair as he guided the party to power in 1997, some commentators said the victory was not as crushing as it first seemed.

The swings in votes in by-elections were far greater in the years leading up to Labour's landslide general election victory in 1997 than was the case in Crewe and Nantwich.

Tony Travers, a polling expert at the London School of Economics, told The Guardian that the result was bad for Labour but "not up there with the sort of megashifts" seen when John Major's Conservatives were running out of steam in the mid-1990s.

- AFP