‘Ashamed’ Charles Clarke slams into Gordon Brown

Labour dissidents are hoping that Charles Clarke's unprecedented attack on Gordon Brown today means he may be angry enough to take on the PM in a leadership battle before the summer.

Clarke's astonishing admission that he now feels "ashamed" to be a Labour MP goes well beyond today's warning about civil war in the Labour party from another former Home Secretary, David Blunkett.

In his interview with the BBC, Clarke called for Brown to "improve his performance". He said watching the party's recent woes develop had been "absolutely terrible".

He went on: "There have been things that have been done recently which have made me feel ashamed to be a Labour Member of Parliament, which was [a position] I never ever wanted to be in.

"I worked... over my whole political life to get Labour into a position where it could be a good Government and I do see that fading away... And it feels absolutely appalling."

Pressed on whether a change of leadership was the answer, he said: "I don't think so, really. I very much expect Gordon still to be leading us into the next General Election."

But there's a growing lobby who want him to go for it. "He's mad enough about Brown to go for it," one of Clarke's Westminster friends told the Mole.

While the odds are against a challenge, the inevitability of defeat is leading to desperate talk by Labour MPs who see the train crash coming and want to switch tracks before its too late.

"Brown can't last until the end of the year," said another dissident. "Someone has got to put pressure on him in the Cabinet to quit. We are looking to someone like Jack Straw or Alan Johnson to say, 'You're time's up'. But if they won't, maybe Clarke could do it."

After the Gurkha debacle, and the climbdown on MPs' allowances, Ministers are at a loss to understand what has gone so drastically wrong with Brown's political antenna. All he seems to be getting on his screen at the moment is remakes of Carry On movies.

"The centre is holding firm, but the parliamentary party seems to be collapsing," moaned one loyal Cabinet minister. "If this madness takes hold, it could be very difficult before we break for the summer."

Brown is said by his allies to be "more relaxed than ever". But his critics say that is just the problem. He hasn't just lost touch with his own MPs, he seems to have lost touch with political reality.