Minister warns of poll meltdown as British PM counts cost

LONDON: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s party faces electoral meltdown if it carries on “fighting like ferrets in a sack” instead of regrouping after a bruising week, a key minister warned Saturday.

Tessa Jowell, the minister for London and the Olympics, told The Daily Telegraph newspaper that the centre-left Labour Party might well “give up” on government if it did not stamp out internal division.

Brown was left counting the cost this weekend after a week in which his authority over the Labour Party was put on the line — amid a fuel crisis and right ahead of Thursday’s bellwether local and London mayoral elections.

He was forced into making concessions over abolishing the 10 percent starting rate of income tax, with Labour backbenchers planning to rebel in big enough numbers to inflict defeat on the government in a parliamentary vote.

Brown announced the policy a year ago — to little complaint from backbenchers — while serving as finance minister in prime minister Tony Blair’s government. Some commentators wondered whether the retreat would prove to be the point at which Brown’s authority unravelled.

A YouGov poll out Friday put Labour on 26 percent, 18 points behind the main opposition Conservatives as the row over the 10 percent tax rate ignited.

“We have to take very serious notice of division and the will to unite is now greater than it’s ever been,” Jowell insisted.

“Everybody knows that the first rule of government is that if you are divided you fail. And the people feel you are letting them down as you are worried about yourselves rather than them.

“There is a risk that you give up on government. It is not the British people that will give up on us, it is the Labour Party itself. “We have to show humility and responsiveness. They are so important. We also need to make it clear that we will never take government for granted.”

She added: “Any divided party is likely to lose an election. What we have to demonstrate is that we are a united party and not... fighting like ferrets in a sack.” (AFP)