THE LEADER of the British Labour Party, Mr Tony Blair, last night urged critics in his own party to drop the "sterile" debate over his leadership style and turn their attention to the task of creating a better Britain.
The latest in the summer's stream of harsh criticism, this time from backbench MP Austin Mitchell, dominated coverage of Mr Blair's high profile visit yesterday to the north west of England and Wales.
Mr Mitchell, writing in the New Statesman, said Mr Blair paid only "lip service" to the idea that ordinary grassroots members had any power, and likened the party's policy process to that of the late North Korean dictator, Kim 11 Sung.
Mr Blair told BBC Radio 4's PM programme he was attempting to challenge the culture of the Labour Party and create a modern, vibrant organisation capable of putting principles into practice. Ever since I've been in the Labour Party, 20 years or more, we've been crying out for a Labour Party that is true to its radical principles but is applying them to the world as it is not the world of 30, 40, 50 years ago - and that is precisely what we have."
Mr Mitchell, in his article for the New Statesman, described himself as a "squashed hedgehog on the road to the manifesto".
"We pretend our work is important. Tony pretends to listen. Then he gets on with his real job of putting forward what he wants in our name," he wrote.
But on BBC Radio 4's Today programme yesterday. Mr Mitchell said his article had been misinterpreted. As far as he was concerned it was a piece of "grovelling sycophancy".
He was not saying that Mr Blair was a dictator: "What I was saying was that Tony Blair is a winner and in touch with the mood of the country. People like Tony Blair, and he is going to lead us to victory."
The British Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Michael Heseltine told the same programme: "Tony Blair's facade is cracking. You have got Clare Short, Austin Mitchell, Paul Flynn, Diane Abbott, and this is when they are in opposition. Imagine what it would be like if this crew were behind Tony Blair as his majority in government.
But the Shadow Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, dismissed Mr Mitchell as a "serial maverick", who had "said colourful eccentric things about every Labour leader since he was elected to Parliament."