Brown endures bombardment by biography

Published on Sunday 11 May 2008 21:57

GORDON Brown will this week attempt to stage a political fight-back after another bruising weekend which saw him beset by attacks from all sides.

From unflattering accounts in the latest raft of political memoirs to opinion poll warnings that Labour is heading for a damaging by-election defeat, there was no respite for the beleaguered Prime Minister.

Mr Brown is expected to try to reclaim the political initiative this week, setting out his draft Queen's Speech programme for the autumn with promises of new measures on schools and health. However, he had to contend with another round of disclosures about his turbulent relationship with Tony Blair in the form of John Prescott's autobiography, serialised in a Sunday newspaper.

The former deputy prime minister described Mr Brown as a "frustrating, annoying, bewildering and prickly" man who could "go off like a bloody volcano".

He revealed that he had at various times urged Mr Blair to sack him as Chancellor and suggested to Mr Brown that he should quit so that he could fight Mr Blair from the back-benches.

"With Tony, when he was moaning on about Gordon's behaviour, I'd say: 'Sack him. Find a new Chancellor if that's how you really feel.' But neither could take the final step. They were caught in their own trap."

Mr Prescott's account followed the disclosure by Mr Blair's wife, Cherie, in her autobiography that Mr Blair would have stood down before the 2005 general election if Mr Brown had been prepared to back his plans for city academies and foundation hospitals.

Meanwhile, another recent autobiographer, former Labour fundraiser Lord Levy, repeated his claim that Mr Brown must have known about the secret loans from wealthy party backers which led to the "cash for honours" police inquiry.

Aides dismissed the allegation as "complete, unsubstantiated garbage". Mr Brown has always insisted that as Chancellor he was careful to distance himself from party funding matters.

Mr Brown's difficulties were underlined by an opinion poll showing that the Tories were on course to make their first by-election gain since 1982 when Margaret Thatcher was in her heyday.

The ICM survey in the Crewe and Nantwich constituency put the Conservatives on 43 per cent, with Labour trailing on 39 per cent and the Liberal Democrats on 16 per cent.