Posted on 01/11/2005 5:45:26 AM PST by tjwmason
Labour MPs delivered a stinging rebuke to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown last night for a new outbreak of feuding that has threatened to derail the start of the party's election campaign.
A direct challenge was made to the Chancellor to deny or withdraw his reported claim that he no longer trusted a word the Prime Minister said - an accusation the Tories are preparing to use in their election material.
Others called for party officials and ministers who were stoking the personal rivalry to be named and sacked.
This morning Mr Brown will join John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, and Alan Milburn, the party's election supremo, at a launch of the party's pre-election posters, which extol the Government's economic achievements.
But Mr Blair will assert his supremacy over Mr Brown later in the week by launching the party's campaign for a spring election while the Chancellor is on an official visit to Africa.
Downing Street announced that Mr Blair would use a policy speech on Thursday to declare that the party's manifesto would be "unremittingly New Labour".
The speech will be seen as a blunt reminder to the absent Mr Brown that Mr Blair is in charge of the election preparations and will not be diverted from pressing ahead with reforms on health, education and law and order.
Mr Blair will say that ideas, not personal ambition, are what drives him - a thinly-veiled criticism of Mr Brown's claims that he has been cheated out of his ambitions to become prime minister.
No 10 also disclosed that Mr Blair would meet members of the Make Poverty History action campaign on Thursday - again echoing one of the Chancellor's themes that he means to emphasise during his seven-day visit to Africa.
The frustration and anger of Labour MPs at the feuding boiled over at a packed private meeting of the parliamentary party at Westminster on the first day back after the Christmas recess.
Eight out of 10 interventions from the floor were directly critical of Mr Blair and Mr Brown for allowing their bickering to become public.
Although most MPs believe that Mr Brown has gone too far by co-operating on a new book exposing his rift with the Prime Minister over the Labour succession, Mr Blair did not escape blame.
Several MPs said the Prime Minister appeared contrite in the face of sustained criticism. He admitted that it was "the first time I have been given a lecture on party discipline" by the Parliamentary Labour Party.
He promised that he and Mr Brown would act to resolve their differences in the approach to the election, assuring MPs that he would listen to their protests.
Emphasising the need for party discipline, he said: "I know from everyone here, in the Cabinet and the Government, nothing is going to get in the way of a unified party with a unified position - and winning a third term that people desperately need."
Clive Soley, a former chairman of the parliamentary party, underlined the frustration felt by MPs over the battling and Claire Ward, who represents marginal Watford, said her chances of holding the seat were being undermined.
She told Mr Blair: "We expect the same discipline at the top as is expected at the bottom."
Another MP said: "It was a dressing down collectively by the PLP of both men. The message was, 'Pack it in and pack it in now' ".
A former Labour MP, Lord Campbell-Savours, challenged Mr Brown to deny making the allegation that he no longer trusted Mr Blair or withdraw it.
He read a quotation from the book Brown's Britain, written by Robert Peston, the City Editor of The Sunday Telegraph, which claimed that, after Mr Blair allegedly reneged on a promise to stand down as Prime Minister last summer, Mr Brown told him: "There is nothing that you could say to me now that I would ever believe."
Lord Campbell-Savours held up a copy of the newspaper as he spoke.
The Chancellor, who had John Prescott sittting between him and Mr Blair, sat stony-faced and did not speak.
But he banged the table with other MPs at the end of the meeting to show support for the unity message.
They have been in various stages of near-open warfare for pretty much the whole of the Labour government.
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