By-election blow piles pressure on 'loony' Brown

Published on Saturday 25 July 2009 19:28

GORDON Brown was facing fresh pressure over his leadership last night as Labour MPs and advisers blamed him for the party's crushing Norwich North by-election loss.

A senior aide to former cabinet minister Hazel Blears compared the party leadership to a "loony" character from Monty Python, in its failure to learn from the losses.

Meanwhile, a senior backbencher warned Brown he had until the end of the summer to reconnect with voters, or risk another rebellion.

Labour's defeat in Norwich was far worse than many insiders had predicted as a 16 per cent swing from Labour saw the Conservatives win by a comfortable 7,348 votes.

Paul Richards, who quit the Labour government alongside Blears when she walked out of Gordon Brown's cabinet in June, uses an article in a left-wing magazine this weekend to compare the current state of the party to the Black Knight in the film Monty Python And The Holy Grail.

In the film, the knight demands a duel with King Arthur only to then ignore the fact that his arms and legs are cut off, declaring: "It's only a flesh wound".

Richards writes: "He ends the scene hopping on one leg, but refusing to give up, shouting 'I'm invincible'. Arthur's reply: 'You're a loony'."

"When Labour lost in Crewe in May last year, with a 7,000 Labour majority turning into a 6,000 Tory majority, we shouted ''tis but a scratch'. When we lost Glasgow East in July last year with a drop of 19 percentage points, we said it was just a flesh wound.

"But Labour can't keep on hopping on one leg after the loss of Norwich North. It might be that Labour voters in Scotland, the north of England, and now East Anglia, who deserted us in their thousands when given the opportunity in a real election, are trying to tell us something."

And in a bitter attack on the decision to dump the former MP Ian Gibson, following revelations about his expenses, Richards says: "It makes the whole party look authoritarian and worst of all unfair."

Richards' assault comes with senior party figures in mutiny following the by-election loss, triggered when Gibson decided to resign after being told he was barred from standing the next election.

That decision was made after it emerged that Gibson had sold his second home in London, partly paid for by the taxpayer, to his daughter for a knock-down price.

Ex-home secretary Charles Clarke yesterday blamed the result on Brown's "incompetent" way of dealing with Gibson. "What happened to Ian Gibson was not fair and many, many people felt that," he added.

Labour MP John McDonnell added: "Between them, Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson decided that Ian Gibson should go. If they had listened to the local party members we wouldn't be in this mess."