Six former ministers yesterday warned British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to sharpen up his act, piling on the pressure after a government member broke ranks and called for a leadership challenge.
The six were among 12 backbench lawmakers from Brown’s governing Labour Party who urged the embattled Scot to come up with a “convincing new narrative” or risk a “hammer blow” at the next general election.
The warning came less than 12 hours after government whip Siobhain McDonagh — who helped enforce Labour discipline in parliament — was sacked, after becoming the first government figure to demand Brown face a leadership challenge.
The junior government member said Labour needed to “clear the air” over its leadership and direction following months of growing infighting.
Brown is struggling to revive dire poll ratings 15 months after succeeding Tony Blair, and the pressure is building in the run-up to Labour’s annual party conference, which starts in a week’s time.
The group of ex-ministers, which included former health secretary Patricia Hewitt, suggested Brown — finance minister for Blair’s 10-year prime ministership — had lost voter trust in his economic competence.
“Labour needs to provide a convincing new narrative if left-of-center politics are to remain the driving force in Britain,” the group wrote in Progress magazine.
“This has to be more than a series of policy initiatives. It has to set a new framework for post-credit crunch Britain,” the group said.
The party’s most urgent task was to “renew confidence in our economic competence” as it had “no explanation yet as to how we are going to steer the economy through the troubled waters ahead,” they said.
“One-off taxes and payouts, no matter how justified in their own terms, do not amount to a strategy,” they said.
The group urged Brown to come up with a clearer message as to what he would do about “day to day” concerns like household bills and mortgages.
There was a “yawning chasm” to fill between left and right-wing parties, the group said.
“Failure to do so would be a hammer blow, not only to the future of progressive politics, but also to our government,” they said.
Earlier, McDonagh said she was just one of many Labour lawmakers who wanted the issue of Brown’s leadership out in the open, insisting that members of parliament (MP) were discussing it in private.
“I’ve never voted against the government, I’ve been the most loyal of the loyal. I’ve not done this lightly,” she told BBC television late on Friday.
“I want to know what the program is and what the plan is,” she said, in a striking statement from a government figure.
“I’m not doing this for anybody else; I’m not a stalking horse,” she said.
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