Brown defiant despite more condemnation

STOKE-ON-TRENT Central MP Mark Fisher last night backed calls for Gordon Brown to quit – as the Prime Minister frantically reshuffled his cabinet.

Mr Fisher said Mr Brown should move on to allow another Labour politician – possibly new Home Secretary Alan Johnson or Deputy Leader Harriet Harman – to take over.

Mr Fisher said: "He was a good chancellor, but it's quite clear what the public feel – it doesn't take a clever person to realise that there needs to be a change.

"There needs to be a caretaker leader to bring stability back to the party and to the country.

"It could be Alan or Harriet, but whoever it is they should come in, steady the ship and then call a general election."

Earlier, Newcastle MP Paul Farrelly had called for Mr Brown to consider his future.

He said: "Fifteen years after the death of John Smith and 12 years after we got into Government we need to put behind us the juggling and the cliques of the Blair and Brown era."

Meanwhile in London, three more cabinet ministers stood down in dramatic scenes yesterday as Mr Brown attempted to reshuffle his cabinet.

Defence Secretary John Hutton resigned to spend time with his family, while Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon stepped down to pursue a role in international affairs.

Both remained loyal to Mr Brown, unlike EU minister Caroline Flint who was denied a cabinet level job.

That decision saw her quit and lash out at Mr Brown claiming he treated her as "window dressing".

Meanwhile Mr Brown also appointed MEP Glenys Kinnock to replace Ms Flint and Lord Adonis to become Transport Secretary – a move which means seven members of the House of Lords will attend cabinet meetings.

Now Mr Brown faces a perilous weekend as he awaits electoral catastrophe when Euro election results are announced tomorrow and a potential backbench revolt when MPs return to Westminster on Monday.

In a frantic day of Downing Street wheeler-dealering yesterday, Chancellor Alistair Darling kept his post, Foreign Secretary David Miliband stayed put and Lord Mandelson won a headline-grabbing peerage for Sir Alan Sugar, in a revamped business department, as an enterprise "tsar".

Mr Brown was forced to deny to reporters he had wanted to sack Mr Darling.

Speaking at a press conference last night the Prime Minister insisted: "If I didn't think I was the right person leading the right team ... I would not be standing here."

He admitted Labour had plunged to "a painful defeat" in yesterday's elections.

But he added: "I will not waver. I will not walk away."

He said the current political crisis, fuelled by the Westminster expenses scandal, "is a test of everyone's nerve – mine, the Government's the country's".

As part of the hectic bartering in No 10, Lord Mandelson was also anointed First Secretary of State, effectively making him deputy prime minister.

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