by Chris McLaughlin
Tensions over Labour’s chances of winning the next election have opened fresh battle lines over party strategy amid denials that Gordon Brown’s closest advisors are locked in a “meltdown” power struggle in Number 10.
After three opinion polls placed Labour 12-13 per cent behind the Tories – the worst run for two decades – Mr Brown has been warned by private pollsters that the south of England could turn into the party’s “killing fields” at the next election.
Leading Blairites have told Mr Brown he must rethink key parts of his policy programme if he is to avoid leading Labour to a heavy defeat at the next election.
But senior figures on the progressive left (see Jon Trickett, page 17) are urging party strategists to address the concerns of millions of voters lost to Labour in the past 10 years while the leadership has concentrated on affluence and “Middle England”.
The regrouping of ultra-Blairites coincides with a circular to selected MPs from former Home Secretary Charles Clarke warning that Labour’s fate could rest in the hands of just 7,500 voters in 24 key Labour seats.
Communities Secretary Hazel Blears told a joint meeting of Compass and Progress last week that Labour would let the Tories back into power if it “retreated to its “comfort zone” and failed to speak out on issues such as crime and immigration, which, she said, obsessed the nation. Labour had to be a “party of the affluent”.
Her remark followed an earlier speech in which Business Secretary John Hutton called for the creation of more millionaires.
Ms Blears said: “We have to win seats in the south east and London as well as Sunderland and Salford. If you want increases in the national minimum wage and investment in the NHS, then we have to persuade people in Hastings, Basildon, Harlow and Luton that we are firm but fair on immigration, that we understand their apprehensions about the housing market and the economy, that we share their ambitions for their children to go to university and get on in life.”
Mr Clarke told the same meeting that Labour needs to do more to embrace public service reforms and the green agenda, adding that; “There was little sign, in last week’s Budget or elsewhere, that Labour’s leadership is facing up to this.”
Labour MPs are becoming increasingly concerned that the ultra-Blairite message is beginning to fill a vacuum left by the leadership and friction between the Prime Minister’s senior staff. Reports focusing on the cause and repercussions of the resignation last week of Spencer Livermore, a close friend and adviser to Mr Brown for 10 years, were described to Tribune by one insider as “overblown”.
But amid predictions of further resignations and rumours of hostility toward Stephen Carter, Downing Street’s newly installed chief of strategy and principal adviser, the former head of City firm Brunswick, Mr Brown has called on staff to work closer together and to be “more focused”.
Friends of Mr Livermore indicated that he had first considered leaving after the aborted election campaign last year which he strongly advised should go ahead and that he made up his mind after Mr Carter, who has been described as “lacking political empathy”, was appointed above his head.
