Exclusive: Plotters want secret ballot to remove PM

Labour backbench dissidents are plotting a sensational challenge to Gordon Brown's dwindling authority by calling for a secret ballot on his leadership, the Mole can reveal.

A group of MPs are secretly discussing a plan to go to the Parliamentary Labour Party to seek a ballot on whether Brown still has the confidence of the majority of Labour MPs to lead them into the next election.

"It's certainly being talked about,'' one senior Labour MP confirmed to the Mole today. "There is growing anger at Brown's contempt for backbench opinion, and we are asking why not hold a secret ballot to find out whether a majority support him or not? Let's put it to the test, here and now."

The main cause of anger is Brown's handling of the reforms to MPs'
expenses, which has put Labour MPs' backs up. Defeat over the
issue - the first Government defeat on an opposition motion since Jim Callaghan in 1978 - is being attributed by the dissidents to their fury over the way Brown announced his plans to change allowances on YouTube without consulting them.

"Nobody had the courtesy to go to the PLP and explain what they were doing," said a Labour MP. "Brown just went on YouTube the next day and announced it without consulting us. The vote on the Gurkhas was revenge. Brown has totally lost our support over that."

And it is not just the squeeze on expenses that is causing the MPs' ire. They are furious because their staff are now on the warpath too. The reforms which were rushed through by Brown and Harriet Harman, the leader of the Commons, in an afternoon of confusion last week mean that, in future, MPs' staff will be employed by the Houses of Parliament, rather than individual MPs, in order to cut down on the room for fiddling expenses.

That major change to their staffs' employment conditions was temporarily overshadowed by the Gurkhas vote. But it has led to MPs' staff giving their bosses an ear-bashing and the MPs are now increasingly becoming bolshie about Brown because of it. It also shows that Hazel Blears - who regards herself as being close to backbench opinion - knew what she was doing last week when she told Brown: "YouTube if you want to."

That may have cost her her job in the next reshuffle, as I wrote in my earlier posting today, but she is seen as a champion by some of the backbenchers who are now kicking up rough. Many are Blairites, like Blears, and they want a day of reckoning for the squad around Brown who brought down Blair and got their reward for it by being made ministers by Gordo.

Those in the Blairites' firing line for benefiting from the coup that forced Blair to go early are Ed Balls, Brown's right-hand man at the Treasury and now Children's Secretary; Tom Watson, the e-minister in the war room at 12 Downing Street; Chris Bryant, Harriet Harman's deputy as Leader of the House; and Sion Simon, the Skills Minister.

It also shows that David Blunkett was right when he warned last week of 'civil war' in the ranks, unless Gordon gets a grip fast. The resentment goes far wider than the Blairites, but that group are now mad enough to bring the Labour house down with Brown, if they have to.