Sultan of spin says Labour's blown it

Published on Saturday 13 September 2008 19:35

GORDON Brown is heading for certain defeat at the next general election because of his Government's abject failure to take the fight to the Conservatives, according to Tony Blair's former spin doctor Alastair Campbell.

Tony Blair's former director of communications warned that the absence of a clear message and the lack of a convincing attack against David Cameron was condemning Labour to defeat.

Cameron, he said, "is going to become prime minister unless we understand that we are in a fight. If the polls don't change, then Cameron is going to become prime minister, without a doubt".

Campbell's bleak assessment – given to party members at a fundraiser in Irvine on Thursday night – came as the number of Labour MPs demanding a leadership contest to replace Brown rose to eight last night.

In another dramatic day for Labour, one of the seven, Joan Ryan, the MP for Enfield North, was fired from her job as Brown's envoy to

Cyprus after she called for a "multiplicity" of senior party figures to stand against him.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, Labour elected Iain Gray as its leader at Holyrood, who pleaded for the party to "pull together".

The latest polling now shows that Labour is facing a landslide defeat at the hands of the Conservatives, with a majority as high as 150 awaiting Cameron if an election were held tomorrow.

Speaking to the private event on Thursday, Campbell insisted that an election was still "eminently winnable", but he said a complete change-around in approach was required: "Gordon Brown is a busy man. Everyone in the Labour Party has got to realise that we are in a proper fight. We have got to engage our opponents in a way that, quite frankly, we have not done so far."

Campbell said that Brown was still partly suffering because of the on-off election fiasco last year. "That was a mistake. He is still being punished for it," he said.

But it was Labour's failure to challenge Cameron that was the primary problem. "At the national level, it's almost as if the Tories don't exist. And yet if the polls don't change, then Cameron is going to become prime minister, without a doubt."

He said that, on the policy agenda, Brown was succeeding. "But there is no politics with it." He added: "Tony (Blair] said in his conference speech (in 2006] if we can't beat this lot, we don't deserve to be in power and he is absolutely right. They are not very good. They are not very impressive." He said Cameron's policy agenda was "unbelievable for its utter vacuity".

In a BBC interview today, former first minister Henry McLeish says that Brown should start by leading from the front in the Glenrothes by-election campaign.

"For most people the writing's on the wall, but I don't share that belief," he said.

"In some respect, I'm sick and tired of the defeatism in the party. It's tough times, there's no disguising that. On the other hand this is a seat that can be won. But the Labour Party has to show the people of Glenrothes, unlike the people of Glasgow, that it wants to win this seat.

"This is not a seat where people can walk on the other side; this is a seat where everybody in the Labour Party, including the Prime Minister, has to get their hands dirty."

However, the MPs who put their name forward calling for a change of leader said only a challenge to Brown would settle the issue.

Ryan said: "I know there's a lot of people feel the same way and I know they find it very difficult to openly raise this issue. I find it very hard. I'm a loyalist to my government. I have never voted against my government. This is a very hard thing to do."

She added: "But I feel this is the most responsible thing I can do and I would be irresponsible if I didn't speak up."

Labour's party conference begins a week today in Manchester.