BRITISH PRIME minister Gordon Brown last night issued a call to Labour Party MPs to unite behind his leadership, declaring that senior party figures would have a proper voice in the organisation and management of the coming election campaign.
During a 20-minute speech to the Parliamentary Labour Party in the House of Commons, Mr Brown sought to counter Labour MPs’ complaints about his management style, which is seen as dictatorial and abrasive: “I am not a team of one, I am one of a team.”
Significantly, perhaps, Mr Brown pointedly said that he would not be “back in campaign headquarters directing strategy as I did in the past” during the campaign because he would “out there on the streets getting Labour’s message across”.
The speech, before a packed meeting in the Gladstone Room in the Commons, which heard strong attacks from some MPs on those involved in last week’s abortive coup against Mr Brown, was roundly applauded on several occasions.
However, Mr Brown conceded that the language of the coming campaign would have to make clear that major public spending cuts would have to be made, regardless of who won the election.
“The choice in this election will not be between change and no change, but between the right kind of change and the wrong kind of change for Britain,” said Mr Brown in a speech described as “combative and confident”.
But he later went on to acknowledge that the 2010 election would be different from the last three campaigns won by Labour in 1997, 2002 and 2005, when the party was able to trumpet major public spending increases.
This year, he said, the effects of the recession had left their mark, including on the UK’s debt figures; and the public’s priorities had changed as well: “The country feels fragile and battered,” he said.
Voters were now concerned about their “jobs, and their children’s future, about anti-social behaviour” in ways that were stronger than in previous elections.
Business secretary Lord Mandelson and leader of the House of Commons Harriet Harman both offered short contributions on the preparations for the election, but, notably, neither of them sought to overshadow Mr Brown.
Last week’s leadership challengers, former ministers Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt, were not mentioned directly by the prime minister during his speech, though he did tell a joke at their expense.
He said he had spoken last with the manager of the UK’s only salt mines who had told him that he needed more people to “go down there. I had told him that I would ask Tony Lloyd [the chairman of Labour’s Parliamentary Party] for a few nominations.”
However, up to a dozen MPs – including some who would normally be on the Labour whip’s “slightly difficult” list – were sharply critical of the actions taken by Mr Hoon and Ms Hewitt during their contributions.
Former home secretary Charles Clarke, who is identified by many within the Labour Party as being the instigator of the plot, did attend the meeting, though it appears that neither Mr Hoon nor Ms Hewitt turned up.