Lord Mandelson and Ed Balls to help Prime Minister after turmoil

Gordon Brown has turned to Lord Mandelson and Ed Balls, his oldest and closest political allies, to beef up his internal support operation after three weeks of Labour turmoil.

The Times has learnt that the Prime Minister asked the two men jointly last week to head a weekly strategy meeting in No 10 to plan the Government’s response to future events and act as an early warning system for him. The move follows a black period for the Prime Minister that has marked the resignation of his aide Damian McBride for suggesting the smearing of opponents, his attempt to reform MPs’ expenses system, his first parliamentary defeat — over the right of Gurkhas to settle — and yesterday’s attack by Hazel Blears over a “lamentable” failure to communicate.

The Communities Secretary, who swiftly denied that she had intended to criticise Mr Brown personally, came under fierce attack herself from Cabinet colleagues for prolonging the party’s troubles. One said: “She’s telling everyone it was not malicious. Well if it was not malicious it was bloody inept.”

Mr Brown’s reliance on Mr Balls and Lord Mandelson will be seen as ironic by many MPs. Lord Mandelson was his close confidant and ally in the years after he entered Parliament in 1983 until they fell out in 1994 when the Business Secretary backed Tony Blair rather than Mr Brown for the leadership.

RELATED LINKS
Blears backtracks after Government attack
Global visit may do more harm than good
Mr Balls, the Schools Secretary, was Mr Brown’s economic adviser from the mid-1990s and during his first two terms as Chancellor, and was a key figure in the decision to make the Bank of England independent. Mr Balls was at Mr Brown’s side throughout the long period when relations with the Blairites, including Lord Mandelson, were poor.

However, since Mr Brown surprisingly resurrected Lord Mandelson’s political career in October by bringing him back into the Cabinet, the two have worked closely. In recent months Mr Brown, Lord Mandelson and Mr Balls have met regularly.

Now, after repeated suggestions that Mr Brown needs more heavyweight political support at the centre, he has asked them together to sharpen up the Downing Street and Cabinet Office operation.

Senior officials, political advisers and Liam Byrne, the Cabinet Office Minister, will attend the weekly meeting, which will discuss policy, communications and strategy, trying to identify in advance looming pitfalls such as the Gurkha fiasco.

Mr Brown has been planning the move for some time but it was confirmed last week after he returned from his trip to Pakistan.

Cabinet ministers weighed in to support Mr Brown yesterday after Ms Blears attacked the failure of the Government to connect with the instincts of people, and appeared to join with the criticism of Mr Brown’s appearance on YouTube to explain his expenses reform plans. “YouTube if you want to,” she said in an article in The Observer. “But it is no substitute for knocking on doors or setting up a stall in the town centre.”

When the story broke on Saturday night Ms Blears rang Mr Brown to insist that she was not criticising him.

But ministers privately and publicly told Ms Blears yesterday that while criticising a failure to communicate she had managed to help the media to keep the narrative about Labour chaos going. Several privately accused her of trying to raise her profile for any leadership contest that might happen next year if Labour lost the election. One said it was inconceivable that she could not have foreseen that the YouTube gibe would be interpreted as “going for Gordon”.

Others said that although she had criticised the way the Government handled the Gurkha issue she had been involved in Cabinet discussions on the subject. One government aide said: “She is feeling very silly today.”

At the same time Alan Johnson, who is regarded widely as a potential unity candidate if Mr Brown steps down after an election defeat, kept open the possibility that he might still one day stand. Some disaffected Labour MPs are saying they hope that he could be persuaded to put himself forward this summer.

Discussing whether he would launch an attempt at the leadership, Mr Johnson said: “I am not saying there’s no circumstances.”

But he added: “I have no aspiration for the leader. My aspiration was for the deputy leadership and I couldn’t even get that. I am not driven by this ambition. I want to be part of a good government and I want it to be led by Gordon Brown. I actually admire Gordon Brown tremendously. I think he is a man for these times.”

Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, dismissed suggestions that Mr Brown’s position could be under threat if Labour did badly at next month’s European and local council elections.

“Whatever the results concerned are, they will be mid-term results and they won’t make any difference to Gordon Brown’s position. He is far and away the best man to lead the Labour Party,” he told the BBC Radio 4 programme The World This Weekend.

He rejected Ms Blears’s claim that there had been a “lamentable failure” by the Government to get its message across. “Hazel is Hazel. She made her point but she subsequently issued a statement clarifying that,” he said.

He expressed concern that internal issues within the Labour Party were distracting people from the central economic argument and the need to take on the Tories. “One of my frustrations is that internal preoccupations are drowning out the message about the Conservatives,” he said.

Amid further signs that Labour discipline was being strained to the limit Charles Clarke wrote a newspaper article that was interpreted as a call on Mr Brown to sack Mr Balls. The Labour MP Lindsay Hoyle called on Ms Blears to consider her position. He said there should be less “sniping and griping” from Cabinet ministers. Mr Hoyle, MP for Chorley, said: “If you’re in Cabinet you have a collective responsibility and that is: ‘Keep out of the argument, keep out of the media, let’s have less comment’.” link...