Brown given five weeks to save party or face challenge

GORDON Brown has been given a five-week deadline to transform Labour's fortunes or face a leadership challenge after the European elections.

Labour MPs are warning that the Prime Minister will face a challenge should the party do badly at the June 4 election.

The warning came after a disastrous week at Westminster that saw a humiliating Government defeat when the Commons voted to allow Gurkha veterans the right to live in Britain and an embarrassing U-turn on MPs expenses.

A growing number of MPs believe Charles Clarke will mount a stalking horse-style leadership bid later this year that would pave the way for a more credible challenge from Health Secretary Alan Johnston or Justice Secretary Jack Straw.

"I no longer believe that Gordon will lead us in to the next election. It is that bad," one senior backbencher told Scotland on Sunday. "I don't think he's enjoying the job and he doesn't want to go down in history as the first Labour prime minister since Jim Callaghan to lose a general election and I think the level of loss will be comparable to that of Michael Foot in 1983.

"This week's damage has been permanent and it calls into question his judgement in a way that's quite stark. He may or may not have a dazzling intellect but he has demonstrated that he has no judgement and that's catastrophic for a prime minister.

"I think he is very fed up and very unhappy in the job and who can blame him. Yes, I think he is losing the plot. There is no narrative, there is no strategy and we don't know what the Government is for anymore."

Another senior Labour backbencher said: "The mood is clearly one of absolute despair. We were astonished by the incompetence of the whips office over the Gurkha vote. It was bad political management, bad politics. But the mood was even worse when it came to the expenses with the Government caving in and then denying that it was caving in – trying to pretend that black was white.

"I think people would like to go to bed tonight and wake up the next morning with him gone. I suspect that Charles Clarke will do something about it after the European election. Some quixotic challenge is almost inevitable.

"The body language and signals coming from Charles Clarke are proving increasingly difficult to ignore and he isn't denying it. That would unbreak the logjam and enable a figure such as Jack Straw or Alan Johnston to break out."

A problem with that scenario is that figures like Straw and Johnston might be reluctant to sacrifice their own ambitions to become a leader that takes Labour to certain defeat.

A lone voice of support for the Prime Minister came from former deputy prime minister John Prescott, who criticised Clarke for his remarks last week when the former education secretary said he was "ashamed" to be a Labour MP. "Charles, if you are ashamed to stay in the party it's obvious what you should do isn't it?" Prescott said.

Prescott however dismissed Clarke's attack, saying that he had been a long-standing critic of the Prime Minister.

Meanwhile, former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown claimed that there could be a wave of defections from Labour if the Government was defeated at the next general election. He said: "There are signs that certain constituency parties are growing really left-wing. Senior Labour figures have said to me, 'If that happens, I'm off'."