Labour chiefs have until the end of this month to plug a £4 million hole in the party’s finances and avert the possibility of a formal declaration of bankruptcy.

UNITE workers at the Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland – who staged a dramatic 48-hour strike last month – are quietly confident that the walkout has achieved its aims. A peace deal appears to be on the cards after Jim Ratcliffe, the reclusive billionaire at the centre of the crisis, shelved his controversial plan to axe the workers’ pension scheme.

A second attempt to install a Downing Street-anointed candidate as Labour’s general secretary is to be made following the withdrawal of David Pitt-Watson.

If it wasn’t clear before, the local and London elections hammered it home with a clunking fist. “New” Labour is dead. The question now is whether Gordon Brown is determined to stagger through the next two years in some sort of grimacing deathlock, clinging on to the policies of the past while attempting to give the appearance of change.

FOREIGN Secretary David Miliband has been urged to intervene against the Mexican government’s “systematic” attempts to crush and destroy the country’s biggest mining and steel workers’ union.

LABOUR Party chiefs have given newly-appointed general secretary David Pitt-Watson an effective ultimatum to confirm he will take up the job or formally declare he is turning his back on it.

GORDON BROWN is braced for a bloody inquest into the future direction of Government policy in the wake of the local elections.

WHATEVER the scale of the damage at a local level, the local elections were always going to have a purgative effect at a national level. The gamut of reaction was pre-destined to run from head-in-hands despair about Labour’s chances at the next general election and hope that this may be a cathartic point at which the need for a change of direction shines as the only beacon of hope across a bleak horizon.

The battle of ideas for Labour’s future began in earnest this week amid calls from all wings of the party for a shift in the Government’s policies and presentation.

A “CRUNCH” meeting of Labour officials was scheduled to take place today (Friday April 25) in an attempt to get to the bottom of whether newly-appointed general secretary David Pitt-Watson intends to take up the post.