Brown to rally Labour ahead of election
Brown to rally Labour ahead of election
Also In The News
|
By Darren Estwick. |  |
Monday, 11, Jan 2010 10:35
By Richard James.
Gordon Brown will appear before the parliamentary Labour party later and urge MPs to stick with him in the build-up to the general election.
The meeting is the first since the failed attempt by former Cabinet ministers Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt to force a secret ballot on Mr Brown's continuing leadership of the party.
At the gathering this evening the prime minister will tell Labour MPs they can still defeat the Conservatives in the coming election.
"We can beat them. We must beat them. And we will beat them," he is set to say.
Mr Brown will also claim the election, expected to be held in May, should be fought on the "big ideas".
The meeting comes as the prime minister faces increasing speculation of a divided government, despite claims by senior members of his Cabinet that all is well within the Labour party.
At the weekend Peter Watt, the party's general secretary until 2007, claimed Mr Brown had been on the brink of calling an early general election three years ago but panicked following a successful Tory conference.
Mr Watt also criticised the way in which the prime minister began his time in Downing Street.
"There was no vision, no strategy, no coordination. It was completely dysfunctional," he said.
"Gordon had been so desperate to become prime minister that we all assumed he knew what he was going to do when he got there.
"I imagined there was some grand plan, tucked away in a drawer. But if any such document existed, nobody seemed to know about it. Gordon was simply making it up as he went along."
The former work and pensions secretary James Purnell who sensationally quit the Cabinet last summer also urged Mr Brown today to offer an election manifesto that represents a 'movement for change'.