Brown faces grilling from Labour executive after his Pyrrhic victory

Gordon Brown has called a press conference at Downing Street this morning to assert his authority after scraping through the vote on 42-day pre-charge detention. But he will be brought down to earth with a bump when he attends the Labour national executive committee afterwards.

Whips went round insisting that a 'win is a win' after Brown's 315-306 victory last night and James Purnell, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (ie the poor), was seen going onto the Commons terrace to celebrate with friends with TWO bottles of champagne.

But this morning's press reaction will smash Brown's hopes of riding high out of the 42-day ambush. The grubby deals worth more than £1bn in future costs (in Tory estimations) and his reliance on the nine DUP MPs (see report below) have left a bitter taste in the mouth for many Labour MPs, while Brown looks morally diminished.

His 'inducements' included the promise of millions of pounds to the DUP for rail lines and roads in Ulster, compensation for lung disease for miners in the seats of northern Labour MPs, the bizarre promise to left-wing Labour MPs including Ian Gibson to lobby for the lifting of EU sanctions against Cuba, and ex-gratia payments to any supects held for more than 28 days without a subsequent charge being brought.

All of which has bought Brown the Briber only temporary relief. Former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith went on the BBC Radio Today programme to make it clear that he will oppose the plans when they go to the Lords, where they will almost certainly be defeated. Which means all Brown's efforts have been in vain, and he will have to go through the whole grubby process again by the end of the year.

Brown will go straight from the Number 10 press conference to the Labour NEC where he is facing an attack by dissidents over his disastrous leadership in the local elections and the Crewe and Nantwich by-election.

NEC member Ann Black has tabled a motion for today's meeting attacking the abolition of the 10p tax band, which threatened to hit those on the lowest incomes until Brown pumped £2.7bn into taxpayers' pockets with a tax handout funded by borrowing.

Black has thrown the whole row forward by demanding to know what is going to happen next year, when the £2.7bn has been spent. Will Brown commit to making sure that the tax handout is repeated next year in the final months before the general election?

Brown and Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, have been hinting it will be 'looked at' in the pre-Budget Report this autumn, but that is not good enough for many Labour members like Black. Her motion says the abolition of the 10p tax band "alienated Labour's activists and core voters, both those directly affected and those who think it is morally wrong".

Her motion regrets that the changes to tax allowances "still leaves around one million of the lowest-paid losers worse off and feeling let down by a government which they believed would protect them, and therefore calls for further measures which fully compensate all those who have lost out."

Black calls for "discussions within the party starting now on whether next year's Budget will maintain the changed allowances or create new groups of losers by withdrawing them." Brown's troubles are nowhere near over.

THE MOLE: 42 DAYS VOTE

FIRST POSTED JUNE 12, 2008