BRITAIN: Labour ministers turned their fire on newly elected Conservative leader Michael Howard last night as they tried to downplay the latest rift between Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair and the Chancellor Mr Gordon Brown.
Mr Blair and Mr Brown were keeping a pre-arranged dinner engagement just hours after the chancellor appeared to criticise the premier and confirm his annoyance at being denied a place on Labour's ruling National Executive Committee (NEC). While Downing Street refused to say what was on the menu, further difficulty seemed assured as Mr Brown indicated he had wanted the NEC appointment, one of three in Mr Blair's gift, as a suitable base from which to run Labour's general election campaign.
Mr Brown's assumption that he would be taking the lead role in the party's election planning, as he did in 1997 and 2001, was contradicted by clear indications from government insiders that Mr Blair himself has taken charge of preparations for a likely 2005 campaign.
The spat over Mr Brown's bid for an NEC seat is symptomatic of renewed tension and hostility between the Blair and Brown camps, first signalled by the chancellor's party conference speech presenting himself as the keeper of "Labour" rather than "New Labour" values, and fuelled this week by Mr Brown's warning against the "fiscal federalism" that might result from the proposed new EU constitution.
Mr Brown's intervention was seen in some quarters as burnishing his own "Eurosceptic" credentials while increasing pressure on Mr Blair to concede a referendum on the EU constitution. It has inevitably renewed speculation about their internal power-struggle just as the Tories have resolved to bury their own divisions of the post-Thatcher era.
Mr Howard's coronation was secured shortly after noon yesterday when Sir Michael Spicer, chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee, confirmed no other candidate had been nominated to succeed Mr Iain Duncan Smith.
After addressing his MPs at their private meeting at Westminster, Mr Howard quickly set about launching his party on the "hard slog" back to power, proclaiming a new approach to politics in which he would "promise less" and "deliver more."
Addressing a diverse gathering of party candidates and supporters in a parish hall on an estate in south-west London, Mr Howard said his ambition was to lead "a reforming administration" which would govern for all Britons; be respectful of the decisions people made as to how they lived their lives; tackle the pockets of desperate poverty which disfigure modern Britain; and break the "cycle of failure" which denied people the chance, space, freedom, education, health and opportunity "to do great things."
In a speech generally notable for its modest tone, Mr Howard took a swipe at Mr Blair, declaring: "We are not going to duck any of the problems that face Britain. No retreat into blandness."
In similarly emollient terms, the new Tory leader insisted the failure to reform Britain's public services was not the fault of those working in the front-line but of "the system of central control." And, where Mr Blair had once declared war on "the forces of Conservatism", Mr Howard depicted the prime minister as the prisoner of Labour's own "forces of reaction."
Disdaining traditional political knockabout in favour of a more ostensibly sympathetic tone, and adding a touch of self-mocking humour, Mr Howard said: "I am quite sure that Tony Blair and some of the people around him now realise that things cannot go on as they are.
"But he knows that the Labour Party will never accept the reforms needed to build first-class public services. For too many of his MPs, words like choice and competition are as welcome as a clove of garlic to Dracula."
He went on: "Indeed it is an exquisite irony that the prime minister who railed against 'the forces of conservatism' now finds himself at the head of the forces of reaction."
However Mr Howard's rebranding of himself and his party was swiftly dismissed by Health Secretary Dr John Reid, who branded the new Tory leader "Mr Poll Tax".