Government faces civil service pay strikes
Updated on 07 September 2008
As Brown attempts to shore up his troubled administration, the government faces a series of strikes by civil servants over pay.
Tomorrow, the Cabinet meets outside London for the first time since 1921 - and later in the week plans to help people struggling with soaring fuel bills will be announced.
As his fightback looms, Mr Brown's Cabinet ally Ed Balls said Labour was ''two-nil down'' to the Conservatives in the run-up to the next election. And the civil servants' union announced that members were about to be balloted. Lucy Manning reports from the TUC conference in Brighton.