Speculation grows over Gordon Brown’s future

Two senior women in Gordon Brown's Cabinet, Harriet Harman and Hazel Blears, have had to issue clarifications of their position vis a vis the Prime Minister as he was forced to endure a miserable Bank Holiday weekend.

Not for the first time, Harman, deputy leader of the Labour party, had to issue a statement insisting on her total loyalty to Brown. This followed a Daily Telegraph report, based on leaks from Harman supporters, which claimed she would stand in a leadership contest if increasingly disillusioned backbenchers tried to force Brown out. A spokeswoman for Harman said today that the report was "utter rubbish".

On Sunday, Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary, used an article in the Observer to attack the government's "lamentable" failure to communicate.

On Brown's refusal to back the rights of former Gurkhas to settle in Britain - which led to his first Commons defeat as prime minister - Blears said the government had "put itself on the wrong side of the British sense of fair play, and no party can stay there for long without dire consequences".

As for the issue that nearly brought a second defeat for Brown - his handling of the MP's allowances row, including a cack-handed attempt to win over the public in a video address - Blears wrote: "I'm not against new media. YouTube if you want to. But it's no substitute for knocking on doors or setting up a stall in the town centre."

However, she later appeared to have lost her nerve when she issued a statement claiming that her comments were not meant as a personal attack on the prime minister.

It was left to Health Secretary Alan Johnson and Justice Secretary Jack Straw, both of whom have been tipped to replace Brown, to scramble manfully to their boss's defence.

Straw told Sky News that Brown was "exactly" the right person to be prime minister and added: "I'm not going to stand, and there's not a vacancy."

Johnson was in a slightly more awkward position because everyone knows that he's the popular choice of those Labour backbenchers who believe Brown may have to be replaced before the next general election if they are to keep their seats.

Johnson went on The Andrew Marr Show to say that Brown was "a man for these times" and was doing a better job than he ever could. "I actually admire Gordon Brown tremendously," Johnson said. Photo opportunities and "looking good on YouTube", he said, were "second-order issues".

However, pushed by Marr to say whether he would ever stand against Brown, he responded: "I am not saying there's no circumstances."

WHAT THEY ARE SAYING

Philip Johnston, the Daily Telegraph: Public ridicule from a Cabinet colleague is a pretty clear sign that things have come apart. There was, said Miss Blears, "a lamentable failure to get the Government's message across". Perhaps she might consider that the reason Labour is in such a pickle is precisely because its message is coming across loud and clear: it is a busted flush led by a prime minister who has clearly lost the trust and respect of his colleagues.

Martin Ivens, the Sunday Times: Blair, for all his faults, actually stood and fought for something. 'Phoney Tony' firmly believed in a liberal interventionist foreign policy and belatedly swung his authority behind public service reform... Brown needs to show his beliefs are not just so much bargain-basement Machiavellianism. But this has been said often before. It's becoming a farce.

Andrew Rawnsley, the Observer: Colleagues have heard the prime minister dismiss it [the issue of Gurkhas' rights] as "a sentimental vote". Mr Brown lacks the emotional intelligence to recognise the importance of sentiment, especially when the sentiment is in the right place. The mind matters in politics, but so does the heart.

William Rees-Mogg, the Times: A British party leader has an increasingly presidential role. The Labour Party in Parliament has a very strong motive to get a new leader if Gordon Brown cannot do this presidential job. Labour MPs want to hold their seats.