Crunch summit for PM as party unrest worsens

Gordon Brown is preparing for a crunch meeting with his party as senior MPs warn that his Government is failing to show middle-class voters it is 'on their side.'

The Prime Minister is expected to try to quell doubts about his faltering leadership in the wake of catastrophic results at the ballot box, a series of policy U-turns and rebellions over car tax and plans for detention without charge for 42 days.

Mr Brown's allies say he needs the two years before the last possible date for the next election  -  summer 2010  -  to demonstrate that he is the right man to lead Britain through stormy economic times.

But with Labour crashing to another all-time low in a poll Friday, backbench critics are bluntly warning the Prime Minister that he has only a few months to show he can turn the situation around.

Mr Brown is under growing pressure to give a clear idea of how intends to rescue Labour fortunes at a meeting of the party's MPs on Monday.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith will outline a series of concessions at the meeting to try to stave off a potentially fatal defeat over 42 days detention for terror suspects in a Commons vote.

One MP said: 'We are approaching crisis point. People are just desperate for Gordon to show us that the tank's not empty.'

Even those once noted for unswerving loyalty appear ready to flex their muscles and tell the Prime Minister publicly where he is going wrong.

The MP in charge of the disastrous Crewe by-election campaign claimed only a 'hopeless romantic' would have believed Labour could pick up votes in the previously safe seat.

Steve McCabe, a party whip and the partner of Fiona Gordon, Mr Brown's political secretary, said he knew from 'day one' that the campaign  -  which ended in a crushing victory for the Tories  -  was 'mission impossible'.

Aspirational voters, he warned, have drifted away from the party. 'Their message was simple. They were fed up with paying too much tax, too much for fuel and food, and feared for their economic future,' he said.

'Labour couldn't claim to be on their side.'

Former deputy Prime Minister John Prescott told LBC radio that Labour had become ' complacent' after 11 years in power and should take Boris Johnson's victory in London as a 'kick up the backside'.

Former Home Secretary David Blunkett told Mr Brown to concentrate on 'getting back in touch' with voters, while the head of the GMB union, Paul Kenny, predicted that Labour would get a 'good hiding' at the next General Election.

Threatening to withdraw the union's £1.4million annual donations, he said his members had turned against the Government  -  with some voting Tory in the recent town hall elections.

To add to the sense of crisis, a YouGov poll put Mr Brown's popularity among voters at the same level as Sir John Major's at his lowest point and worse than failed Labour leader Michael Foot.

The survey puts Labour on 23 points, its lowest level of support since Gallup's first opinion poll in 1943. The Tories are 24 points ahead on 47 per cent with the Liberal Democrats on 18.