PM's oldest ally goes on TV to call him a ditherer

Labour Deputy Chief Whip Nick Brown says Mr Brown's indecision over an Election last autumn was a 'watershed' from which his reputation has not recovered.

The attack in a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary to mark the PM's first anniversary in No10 on June 27 also sees Cabinet Ministers Jack Straw and Jacqui Smith question the Prime Minister's judgment and character.

Nick Brown tells interviewer Andrew Rawnsley of the Election fiasco: 'The sense of it being on and it being off was a watershed.

'If the decision was not to go, the speculation shouldn't have been allowed to continue. People started thinking ... were we being decisive enough. It made them think differently about the Government.'

Justice Secretary Jack Straw claims Tony Blair was much more decisive.

'Tony was a much more instinctive decision-maker,' says Mr Straw, while Mr Brown is 'somebody who is cautious in his decision-making'.

And Ms Smith says: 'Gordon asked me, as he asked others, whether or not there should be an Election. I told him that I did want one.'

Whitehall expert, journalist Sue Cameron, says the PM's temperament was exposed in November when two child benefit disks with details on 7.25million families were lost.

'When they told Gordon, he is supposed to have been so furious he kicked the nearest desk,' said Ms Cameron.

• Gordon Brown: Where Did It All Go Wrong? - Channel 4, tomorrow, 8pm