Brown humiliated as ministers ignore him at Cabinet session

A senior Cabinet member told the Standard that the special pre-conference session was "excruciating" and that several ministers were clearly unhappy with the Prime Minister's presentation.

One minister even demanded to know why the No 10 meeting was not discussing Labour's unpopularity rather than focusing on the Tories.

"This can't go on for much longer," the source told the Standard. "It's not just the country that's not listening to Gordon any longer, his ministers aren't listening to him. The meeting was just excruciating - an embarrassment."

In a strongly worded attack on the PM's waning authority, the source added: "Something is going to give. Either it will end up as a Cabinet entirely made up of Brownites, or a Cabinet without Brown. There were people staring at their hands, some scribbling on their papers, someone else on a Black-Berry. The mood was awful."

As Mr Brown told his Cabinet that issues about the direction of the party should not be raised until after the economic turmoil dies down, the minister said: "Gordon is now measuring his survival in two-week horizons. He just wants to get through conference. It's humiliating for everyone. All he does is re-state the problem, he doesn't address it."

Children's Secretary Ed Balls and deputy leader Harriet Harman called for loyalty to Mr Brown in the meeting. But it emerged that another senior figure challenged the Premier for focusing entirely on the problems facing the Conservatives, who are currently ahead by 19 points in the polls, and not on Labour's shortcomings.

A source said: "Someone asked, 'Why can't we have a presentation on what people think of us?' The only answer offered from Mr Balls was that Mr Brown knew perfectly well what people thought of him."

Senior minister Tessa Jowell today admitted there was "infighting" in Labour. Speaking in Beijing, she said: "The infighting in the party is not affecting my job at all. I am here focused on the Paralympics."

The PM is planning to slap down critics in his conference speech with a strongly worded counter-attack on figures preoccupied by the "internal debate".

Another minister said that Mr Brown was in no situation to hold a major reshuffle, adding: "He is just not in a strong enough position to make big changes."

Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell were in a state of "almost visible frustration" during the meeting, today's Daily Mail reported.

And Channel 4 News quoted a Cabinet Minister saying: "It is really all about buying another couple of weeks or months - weeks, I think."