Charles Clarke accuses Brown of ‘dog whistle politics’

Charles Clarke has put the boot into Gordon Brown while he is down, accusing the Prime Minister of "dog whistle" politics in his past calls for "British jobs for British workers". The former Home Secretary's outburst for the Blairite think tank, Progress, is the last thing Brown needed in the aftermath of last week's drubbing in the polls and the continuing bloody row over the 10p tax band debacle.

Some of Brown's allies dismiss Clarke as 'bitter', but many Labour MPs support what he says with such alarming clarity. "Last Thursday's Conservative success was the direct result of Labour failure," he thundered. "The massive response to the abolition of the 10p rate demonstrated that politics matters - the decision affected millions of people and reverberated at the polls."

And, in a sideswipe at Brown, he added that as Blair showed in Labour's long march from the wilderness, "Good leadership matters". The clear implication is that Brown is not showing it. He calls for the Brownites to suspend the "black arts of inner-party briefing" but his words threaten to widen the internal row in the Labour Party, and weaken Labour's chances of holding on to the Crewe and Nantwich seat in the May 22 by-election [see separate report below].

Labour now appears to be tearing itself apart. Frank Field went in to see the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, this afternoon to press him for details of the compensation package for the 5.3m people who will lose out because of the abolition of the 10p tax band. The Cabinet this morning spent two and a half hours pouring over the entrails of last week's local election disaster. The one thing they were agreed on is that they cannot wait until the pre-budget report in October for the Chancellor to pull Brown's cajones out of the fire.

THE MOLE: PM UNDER SIEGE

FIRST POSTED MAY 6, 2008