Ministers urge PM to remain steady under fire

Gordon Brown will be deluged with conflicting advice in the event of poor local election results, but there is no appetite inside or outside government for a challenge to his leadership.

Even an attempt to reduce the number of MPs required to mount a challenge, due to be debated at the party conference, is attracting no interest.

Brown and his entourage insist he will remain committed to long-term solutions that should ensure that Britain gets through the next year, unlike the US, without falling into recession.

Michael White previews today's local elections with Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote Link to this audio

The post-election strategy is clear. He is likely to make a speech soon afterwards setting out how he wants the country to judge him by the time of the next general election.

The prime minister is being advised to focus on a smaller number of issues; to not follow newspaper fads; and to avoid, which he has so far failed to do, internal Whitehall debates over matters such as the size of gaming machines.

Even if privately they are frustrated - and sometimes gloating - Blairite MPs insist they want to help him. Charles Clarke, the former home secretary, and his successor, John Reid, insist they will have nothing to do with a leadership challenge.

Tony Blair told former colleagues at the weekend that he was not missing the premiership and is continuing to advise Brown sympathetically behind the scenes. The foreign secretary, David Miliband, who yesterday appointed the former Financial Times and BBC journalist Ian Hargreaves as director of Foreign Office communications, is also insisting he has no interest in stirring dissent.

Many ministers, including those instinctively unsympathetic to Brown, say the government must not panic in the face of bad results.

"Maybe I am too grizzled, but we have been losing local elections for five years, mainly under Tony," said one minister. "Of course it is unfortunate, but it is what incumbent governments do."

It will be in Brown's interest for the local elections inquest to be focused on what he admitted for the first time yesterday was a mistake: the abolition of the 10p tax rate. But that debate is likely to widen into a broader discussion about fairness in taxation that may reveal deeper fissures in the party.

The general secretary of the Fabian Society, Sunder Katwala, is one of many disappointed but not disillusioned Brownites. In a statement, he advised Brown to "make a fairer Britain the defining mission: take risks for the cause of child poverty; make clear what climate change demands of us all; go for electoral reform and a written constitution. If not now, when?"

Katwala had then to rush out a statement explaining that he was expressing a personal view, presumably to ensure no one thought that the Fabian executive member Ed Balls, the children's secretary, agreed with him.

Most ministers are arguing that the solution for Labour lies in staying steady under fire, remaining close to voters' concerns over the economy, and doing more to put over a moral, rather than bureaucratic vision of the government.

Brown will, however, face trouble if he reneges on his commitment to compensate those who have lost from abolition of the 10p tax rate. On detention without charge, he is determined not to compromise, in the belief that the public, if not parliament, is with him.

The real test may be whether he can find a way of explaining what he is about. The frustration for Labour MPs is that they think he has still to find his voice.

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