Gordon Brown defends leadership
Updated on 27 September 2009
Gordon Brown is again forced to defend his leadership as Chancellor Alistair Darling says Labour looks like it has lost "the will to live".
At the start of the party's autumn conference in Brighton, Mr Darling told the Observer: "We don't look as if we have got fire in our bellies. We have got to come out fighting."
Mr Darling likened Labour to a football team, saying: "Sometimes you see their heads go down and they start making mistakes and they lose the will to live."
Asked whether it was the "captain's job" to inspire the team, he added: "It is the responsibility of all of us, no matter where we are playing in the team."
But he offered his backing to Mr Brown. "Gordon is our leader. Gordon is the Prime Minister. Let's get on with the job in hand and fight for what we believe in."
Mr Brown admitted that he sometimes considered whether people thought someone else could do a better job of leading the country.
But he had "no doubt" that he had taken the right decisions on the big issues.
Despite polls which consistently give a double-digit lead to the Conservatives, Mr Brown said he believed that voters were currently in a state of "suspended judgment" over his handling of the economic crisis and the scandal of MPs' expenses.
As they began to become more confident that Britain was coming out of recession and that he was cleaning up Westminster, their opinions may shift in the months leading up to the election, he suggested.
He left little doubt that he was determined to fight on in the face of his current difficulties, telling BBC1's Andrew Marr Show: "I do not roll over."
Mr Brown said: "Leadership is fighting for what you believe in. It is the strength to take the tough decisions through difficult times - the strength I believe I have been able to show over the last year on the big decisions.
"It means being sure about what you believe - which I am - being sure also that you have the strength to get up in the morning and take the job on and move it forward and the strength to carry through everything that you say you are going to do."
Mr Darling was one of several government ministers trying to rally the party as the conference got underway today.
Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, insisted that Labour should not be written off. He told the Sunday Mirror: "This election is not in the bag - neither for us, nor the Tories.
"Every day we face in one way or another attempts to write Labour off or pretend that some of us are preparing for defeat.
"That's not my belief."
He insisted that the election was "up for grabs", rejecting suggestions that the poll was already decided.
Former work and pensions secretary James Purnell, who quit the Cabinet in June with a warning that Mr Brown's continued leadership would make a Tory victory more likely, today said he would nevertheless make a better Prime Minister than David Cameron.
"I very much hope that we win the next election, and I will be fighting for us to win," Mr Purnell told a Demos meeting on the fringe of the Brighton conference. "I am clearly in no doubt that Gordon is an infinitely better Prime Minister than David Cameron would ever be."
