By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 7, 2010; A10
LONDON -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Wednesday sought to fend off a surprise challenge to his leadership from within his own ranks, a blow to him and his ruling Labor Party just months before general elections.
The revolt marked Brown's toughest challenge since the summer, when a flurry of senior cabinet officials abandoned him and rumors swirled that he would be forced to step aside. The man viewed as Washington's closest ally in Europe survived that confrontation, and Brown supporters took heart in signs that the call for a vote on his leadership by two senior Labor lawmakers appeared to be gaining only limited traction.
Labor officials dismissed any notion of an internal vote, saying there was no legal precedent to change the party's leader so close to general elections, which must be held by early June. Most leading members of Brown's cabinet lined up behind him, though some waited until evening before issuing statements of support.
Even if Brown quells the rebellion -- most analysts here think he will -- the public display of discord could further damage Labor's chances in upcoming elections against Britain's recast Conservative Party, now tantalizingly close to ending Labor's 13-year-old rule.
"Labor is turning the gun on itself with this," said Jonathan Tonge, head of politics at the University of Liverpool. "Instead of talking about how they're going to beat the Conservatives, they're showing deep divisions just as there were some seeds of hope that they might be getting back into the race."
At stake is the future of a man who took office from Tony Blair in 2007 through an internal party process -- as opposed to a general election -- that left many rivals and Blair loyalists bitter. Brown has had a stormy tenure. In recent weeks, however, his administration has appeared to win at least a measure of new public support after slapping fresh taxes on bankers' bonuses. Now, analysts said, Brown's ability to manage rising public opposition to the war in Afghanistan and cope with a deep recession and runaway budget as a result of the financial crisis may be diminished.
Two of Blair's former senior ministers launched the revolt. Geoff Hoon, Britain's defense minister in the buildup to the Iraq war, and Patricia Hewitt, a former health secretary, sent a letter to fellow Labor lawmakers calling for a secret ballot on Brown.
"We're very concerned that we're simply not getting our message across," Hoon said in an interview with the BBC. "Going into a general-election campaign, there are continuing questions [about Brown's] leadership."
One of Brown's closest allies, Children's Secretary Ed Balls, said the cabinet was "fully behind" Brown. Some Brown loyalists decried the maneuver as vindictive grandstanding by two lawmakers whose careers are on the downswing, with one of them set to step down in the coming months.
British political parties have turned on their own before. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was pushed from power not by British voters but by her own Conservative Party about two years before she was set to face elections. But analysts said there has never been an internal revolt like this in modern British politics so close to an election.
If Brown is forced out, the Labor Party will grapple for a leader with almost no time to spare. Possible contenders include Foreign Secretary David Miliband; his brother, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband; House of Commons Leader Harriet Harman; and Home Secretary Alan Johnson.
The Conservative Party expressed delight at Labor's public division, with its chairman, Eric Pickles, telling the BBC: "It's irresponsible to have such a dysfunctional, faction-ridden Labor Party running the country."
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