Prime Minister Gordon Brown Defiant in Face of Charles Clarke Oust Challenge

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Prime Minister Gordon Brown Faces Oust Challenge from Disgruntled Charles Clarke

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Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his allies remained defiant today in the face of open mutiny from Charles Clarke whose recent article in the NEW STATESMAN has caused a flurry of excitement in the world's press of a possible imminent leadership crisis.  Whether the Prime Minister can weather the storm over the coming weeks, as he hangs on to the masthead as he tries to navigate his party away from the iceberg, remains to be seen, or will it be a case of "man overboard" as Westminster gets back in to full swing after the parliamentary summer break?

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Mr Clarke’s brutal intervention reflected his irritation with colleagues over what he believes is their “fatalistic” approach to impending electoral catastrophe. “I think many in the cabinet share the view we are in great difficulty and are doubtful about our capacity to get out of it,” he said. But he admitted: “There isn’t a view . . . that they should go and speak to Gordon in the way I have been describing.”

Labour’s Glasgow East by-election defeat in July triggered a wave of speculation Mr Brown could be toppled in an autumn coup, but Labour MPs and cabinet ministers appear to have decided – for now – to stick with the prime minister.

Those leading the July plotting concluded it was better to let Mr Brown stage his economic relaunch and make his party conference speech in Manchester on September 23 and await the judgment of MPs when they returned to the Commons on October 6 after the long summer break.

Mr Clarke’s intervention did not stick to their script and made it look like the rebels were trying to scupper Mr Brown’s efforts to revive the party. “The timing could not have been worse,” admitted one senior Labour MP.

Mr Clarke has always been something of a maverick figure among the Brown critics, and did not co-ordinate his attack with former allies of Tony Blair both within and outside the cabinet.

Yet the Brown camp’s attempts to dismiss Mr Clarke as a lone voice does not relate to political reality: his public comments reflect a view of the prime minister widely shared across the Labour movement. “He just cannot communicate and in politics that is fatal,” said a Labour MP, normally loyal to the prime minister.

While many Labour MPs identify Mr Brown as a main part of their electoral problems, they fear that getting rid of him in a coup and an unpredictable leadership contest – with no clear alternative waiting in the wings – could make matters worse.

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Former Home Secretary Charles Clarke has rattled his cage by warning UK Prime Minster Gordon Brown that he had better get his act together or be ousted.  The move comes as PM Gordon Brown tries to relaunch his leadership credentials by reassuring the public that Chancellor Alastair Darling's announcement of the "worst recession in 60 years" was exaggerrated.  Mr. Darling's remarks caused the pound f/x rates to plunge against the Euro and the dollar, and share prices to plummet.  Prime Minister Gordon Brown -incandescent with fury at the Chancellor's remarks - is expected to laugh them off whilst promising his right hand man that his job is safe...for now.  Always a bad sign. 

Charles Clarke in the meantime denies it is a Blairite plot or that he never did like Gordon Brown anyway...