Milburn: Brown creating uncertainty

In comments likely to be taken as tacit support for rebels who want to depose Gordon Brown, ex-health secretary Alan Milburn suggested the Prime Minister was guilty of "uncertainty".

He claimed Mr Brown had delivered "a splurge of Whitehall initiatives" rather than following through on promises to decentralise power and enhance social justice.

The intervention from Mr Milburn - an arch-Blairite - came in a pamphlet for Labour think-tank Progress ahead of the party's annual conference this weekend.

"One of New Labour's key strengths has been its preparedness to face the future challenge rather than taking comfort in the past achievement," he wrote.

"The willingness to change is what has made New Labour so dominant in British politics and forced even our most strident opponents into contemplating changes they once thought abhorrent. Now change beckons once again."

In an apparent dig at Mr Brown's controversial abolition of the 10p tax rate, Mr Milburn called for taxes to be cut for the low-paid.

Although the premier had committed himself to putting greater power in the hands of citizens, a "splurge of Whitehall initiatives seem to point in the opposite direction", Mr Milburn argued.

Local people should be given more direct control over health and police services, as well as facilities such as parks and children's centres, he wrote.

Mr Milburn insisted: "Public disengagement is a symptom of disempowerment. Too often we shut people out when we should be letting them in. This half-in, half-out approach won't work. Uncertainty has to make way for clarity."