Do more for the South, Brown is urged

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John Denham warned the Prime Minister-elect the party's support in the region was collapsing because "too many southern voters are no longer sure that we understand their lives or that we speak for them".

The former Home Office minister, who resigned over Iraq and has been tipped for a return to frontline politics, said some of his colleagues appeared to regard the South as "inherently hostile territory".

"Others seem to have persuaded themselves that South means selfish," he added.

"That we are so prosperous, so comfortable and so self-centred that all we want to be is demanding consumers, whether at the supermarket or in public services.

"In the recent past this language has dominated much of New Labour's attempt to appeal to Middle England.

"It's actually a parody, a cruel caricature. Our next Prime Minister must rebuild Labour in the South."

Mr Denham, MP for Southampton Itchen, said that across the South, East and South-West, Labour had lost the support of a quarter of those who voted for it in 1997.

After this month's local elections, nearly half of local authorities in the South-East have no Labour councillor.

He argued that southern voters were more affected by rises in council tax, inheritance tax and rapid immigration than those in other parts of the country.

Mr Denham, speaking to the Fabian Society in London, floated radical policy proposals - such as changing the council tax system so that the charge could account only for a fixed maximum proportion of pensioner income.