Minister attacks Labour's direction

Hazel Blears. Photo / AP

The first cracks in Gordon Brown's Cabinet have appeared as a senior minister attacked his Government's "lamentable" failure to communicate and warned of "dire" consequences if it continues to blunder on policy and misread the mood of the British people.

After a disastrous week in which the Prime Minister suffered his first defeat in the House of Commons and was forced into a humiliating retreat over MPs' expenses, Communities Secretary Hazel Blears openly criticised the Government's handling of the Gurkhas and says people no longer believe many of its big policy announcements.

And in a clear reference to the Prime Minister, who has been ridiculed for his recent appearance on internet site YouTube to make an announcement about MPs' expenses, the strongly Blairite Cabinet minister says such use of "new media" by politicians is far less effective than old-fashioned campaigning.

"YouTube if you want to," she says in an article in the Observer. "But it is no substitute for knocking on doors or setting up a stall in the town centre."

However, it is her savage criticism of the Brown Government's failure to connect with the instincts of the British people that is most devastating.

On the issue of the Gurkhas' rights to settle in Britain, she says the Government put itself "on the wrong side of the British sense of fair play, and no party can stay there for long without dire consequences".

The Nepalese soldiers, who have been part of the British Army for nearly 200 years, are demanding equal rights of residence in Britain.

While she says Gordon Brown will lead the party into the next election, she argues that the Government has to appear more "human" if it is to have any hope of defeating the Conservatives.

"Labour ministers have a collective responsibility for the Government's lamentable failure to get our message across," she says.

"All too often we announce new strategies, five-year plans, or launch new documents, often with colossal price tags attached, which are received by the public with incredulity at best and at worst hostility. Whatever the problems of the recession, the answer is not more Government documents or big speeches."

Most ministers and a majority of Labour MPs are playing down suggestions that Brown could face a leadership challenge, or be asked by a Cabinet delegation to step down, if Labour suffers a mauling in the June 4 local and European elections. Blears' remarks none the less reflect growing disquiet at all levels of the party.

Up to now, Cabinet ministers have remained studiously loyal to Brown, despite a terrible month that saw the sacking of his political adviser Damian McBride for trying to smear leading Conservatives, widespread criticism of the Budget for lacking economic credibility, and chaos over Gurkhas' rights and MPs' expenses.

Now the Blears intervention suggests that discipline is breaking down and that she may be testing the waters for a possible leadership bid if Brown were to go.

Former Education Secretary Ruth Kelly, writing for the Observer, joined Blears in demanding a change of direction and a greater focus on domestic reform in a further sign of anxiety and unrest among Blairites.

She says that while Brown has done well abroad, steering debate on the global economy, Labour appears to lack a sufficiently clear and robust domestic strategy. "The result is that the Government can seem buffeted by events rather than in control of them."

Kelly stood down from the Cabinet last year amid rumours that was she was unhappy with aspects of Brown's leadership, but has remained studiously silent since. Now she says: "Somehow in the immediacy of the economic crisis, New Labour's strong message on public service reform, on devolution and on climate change has got lost in the fog."

John Prescott, a former Deputy Prime Minister, yesterday joined the calls for Labour to sharpen up its message and sort out its organisational problems.

He said Brown was getting the big issues right but the Government was failing to make its case on subjects from the resettlement of the Gurkhas to the recently criticised mortgage protection scheme.

- OBSERVER