2.45pm BST update

Brown hit by call for resignation and bad poll ratings

Andrew Sparrow, Hélène Mulholland and agencies
guardian.co.uk,
Monday July 28 2008



Gordon Brown during a press conference at 10 Downing Street last week. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Gordon Brown's standing was further undermined today as a Labour MP urged him to resign, new poll figures cast doubt on his performance, and Harriet Harman said voters had "not seen the best" of him since he became prime minister.

Gordon Prentice, the MP for Pendle, said that Brown ought to stand down because he did not have the skills to lead Labour to victory at the next election.

Prentice, an independent-minded backbencher but not someone who has called for Brown's resignation before, spoke out following a weekend of speculation about the existence of a Labour plot to oust Brown later this year.

In response to the reports, Harman, Labour's deputy leader, gave a generally supportive interview on GMTV this morning.

But even she conceded that the last 12 months had not seen Brown performing at his best.

Harman, who is deputising for Brown this week while the prime minister is on holiday, said: "I have got a great deal of confidence in Gordon Brown, having worked with him for 25 years.

"I can recognise that I don't think the British people have seen the best of him yet as prime minister.

"But the reason I so strongly support him is because the big problems people are facing in this country at this moment are the economy, the cost of fuel and food prices.

"And I think Gordon Brown, more than anybody, has done more over the last 10 years to make people better off."

However, in a separate interview on BBC Radio 4's The World at One, Prentice revealed that he had told Labour activists in his constituency last week that he did not think the party could win the general election with Brown as leader.

"I think you need a different set of skills to be prime minister than you do as chancellor of the exchequer. That's the reality.

"You have got to be able to paint a picture, you have got to be able to enthuse people, you have got to be able to motivate people, you have got to be able to lead."

Prentice said that there should have been a leadership contest last year and that, if there had been, Labour would have learnt more about Brown before he moved into Downing Street.

As an example of what he meant, Prentice said that he had "no idea" that Brown was so enthusiastic about nuclear power or the Trident nuclear submarine programme before he became prime minister.

Prentice would not be drawn on who he thought should replace Brown. He said that there was "a galaxy of talent" in the party.

And he said he had "absolutely no idea" how many other Labour MPs wanted Brown to step down.

But Tony Lloyd, the chairman of the parliamentary Labour party, told the same programme that an "overwhelming majority" of his fellow Labour MPs did not agree with Prentice about the need for Brown to resign.

Lloyd said that when Brown was chancellor he was "the most successful finance minister probably in the whole world" and that Brown had the skills to lead Britain through the economic downturn.

The call for Brown to resign came as one survey showed that more than one in five Labour supporters thought that David Cameron, the Tory leader, would make a better prime minister, while another gave the Conservatives a 19-point lead.

Doubts have been raised about Brown's continued leadership following Labour's humiliating byelection defeat last week in Glasgow East, where the party lost one of its safest seats to the SNP.

The byelection defeat was the party's third in nine weeks.

Rebel Labour MP Ian Gibson (Norwich North) said this morning that Brown had until September to come up with some "zippy policies" and needed an "Obama moment" to reignite his premiership.

Asked what he thought about MPs supposedly plotting to remove Brown, he told GMTV: "Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough. People should come out in the open, say what their arguments are, what they stand for and what they believe in."

While Brown's popularity is in the doldrums, Cameron's is in the ascendancy, according to a ComRes poll for today's Independent which found that most voters (53%) believed the Conservative party was ready for office, with 46% saying the same about Cameron.

Around a third of voters (34%) said they still believed Brown was the better man to lead the country, but 22% of his own party's backers disagreed.

A crumb of comfort for the prime minister came with evidence that, despite the Glasgow East meltdown, Scottish voters still preferred him to Cameron.

ComRes telephoned 1,021 adults on July 23 and 24 and the results were weighted.

A separate poll in the Daily Telegraph saw the Tories stretch their lead by a point to 19% despite falling a point to 45%; Labour fell two points. The Liberal Democrats were up two at 17%.

The prime minister's personal popularity ratings were as low as John Major's worst, it found.

But the Telegraph's YouGov poll also backed the ComRes findings that, while Cameron seemed competent and likeable, half of voters still considered him "lightweight", 57% inexperienced and 39% "somewhat shallow".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008 ... wn.labour1