With Glasgow in peril, ministers jostle for an autumn leadership race

Jockeying for the Labour leadership election has already started among Gordon Brown's Cabinet ministers while the Prime Minister is in Japan for the G8 summit. One Cabinet minister has told friends: "I've even put out feelers to the Campaign Group [the left-wingers led by John McDonnell]. You never know who you might need."

There is a serious split developing between those Labour MPs who are resigned to the party losing the next general election to the Tories, and those who don’t want to lose their jobs and will do anything to save them - including going in to tell Brown he must go.

There is a growing belief that if Labour loses the Glasgow East by-election on July 24, there will be a move against the PM and it will come around the time of the TUC conference in September. As the Glasgow East constituency party meets today to chose its candidate following the withdrawal for family reasons - which few believe - of the favoured candidate George Ryan, one senior minister told me: "We are going to lose Glasgow East and we should be planning for the aftermath."

The main runners and riders to replace Brown are the two heavyweights of the Cabinet, Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, and Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary. The younger contender David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, would be guaranteed Blairite votes, but is being seen as too much of a geek to win against the Tories' David Cameron.

But it could be a big field, given the egos of MPs. Harriet Harman's allies have been putting out feelers to find out how popular she would be in a leadership race. She might be able to corner the block vote of the sisterhood, but they would have got a flea in their ear from most of the men on the Labour backbenches.

Harriet is seen as one obstacle to Gordon appointing a Deputy Prime Minister to beef up the Government. He may be using Harriet's feelings as a way of deflecting demands for him to appoint a successor to Prezza, but he is privately saying that as the elected deputy leader, she would be upset if she was not DPM and he's not going to give her the job.

It's a classic case of Brown dithering. It's not even clear that he will have a reshuffle before the summer recess, although he needs to act fast to stop the rot. His judgment is now coming under fire from some of those close to him.

His decision to go ahead with the 42-days detention without charge for terrorist suspects is likely to be rebuffed in the Lords tomorrow on the second reading of the anti-terror legislation. He is facing an extraordinary revolt during the committee stage of the Bill in the Lords by some of Tony Blair's most senior allies led by Lord Falconer and Lord Goldsmith, the former Lord Chancellor and the Attorney General.

By the time the Lords get to defeat the Government, it could be the overspill of Parliament in October or November. By then, if Glasgow East goes badly, there could be a new leader on the way.

Brown's Cabinet colleagues privately say that Gordon's tragedy was that he never ran a department other than the Treasury where he could micro-manage to his heart's content, buoyed by a golden economic period. "He doesn't understand that in politics shit happens," said one of his allies.

THE MOLE: PM UNDER SIEGE

FIRST POSTED JULY 7, 2008