Cut taxes to regain middle class support, Blairites tell Brown

Blairite MPs have launched a co-ordinated campaign for a change of direction by Gordon Brown, urging him to cut taxes to win back "middle-income" voters.

The calls, from a group which includes five former ministers, go beyond the demands for a reduction in fuel duty, which has led to conflicting signals from ministers. They amount to the opening salvos in a battle for the future direction of the Labour Party, ranged against left-wingers who are campaigning for socialism to be given greater priority.

In a separate attack, Ben Wegg-Prosser, a former Downing Street aide to Mr Blair, has warned Mr Brown that he is "reaching the end of his shelf life". He said the Prime Minister should start planning to stand down and focus on his legacy.

The demands could hardly come at a worse time for Mr Brown as he prepares for a crucial meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party on Monday to try to kill speculation that he could quit before the end of the year.

Writing for the think-tank Progress, the Blairites urged Mr Brown not to abandon New Labour policies in the wake of the Crewe and Nantwich by-election defeat by the Tories. Sally Keeble, the MP for Northampton North, said that "middle income, Middle England has moved on since 1997 and needs to know that we have moved too". Appealing to Mr Brown to introduce tax cuts "on the most sensitive goods and services, including fuel", she continued: "The tax system provides the most powerful means of convincing this new electorate we're on their side."

Writing in The Spectator, Mr Wegg-Prosser said the state should be slashed back to prove Mr Brown is on the side of the voters.

Another MP writing for Progress, Shona McIsaac, said: "Any thoughts that the aspirational middle classes will come back if we veer sharply to the left are plain bonkers. To be brutal, the Government has been bloody awful at pointing out that things did get better."

Stephen Ladyman, a former transport minister, said that if Labour was to remain in power, it needed a "new deal" with motorists by scrapping the fuel duty escalator, including the rise of 2p a litre in the autumn, which is being reviewed by Alistair Darling.

Mr Ladyman reinforced calls for the Chancellor to scrap the planned increase in Vehicle Excise Duty on cars registered after 2001. "A 'green' tax that you cannot avoid by changing your behaviour is not a 'green' tax, it's just a tax," he said.

Fiona MacTaggart, a former Home Office minister, said voters were furious over the abolition of the 10p lower tax band, "because we are not the party of taxing the poor to help the prosperous".

Some Labour MPs fear there will be lasting damage from Mr Brown's tax increase on the low paid to pay for the 2p cut in the basic rate of tax to 20p in the pound, and the £2.7bn compensation package will not be enough to repair it.

A YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph put Labour on 23 points, in what the newspaper said was the party's lowest level of support since Gallup first questioned the electorate in 1943. The poll put the Conservatives on 47 points.

Meanwhile, rank and file members of three unions who are major Labour donors – the GMB, Unison and the Communications Workers – have tabled motions for their conferences calling on them to withdraw Labour funding. It was not clear they would be endorsed by union leaders. "People are out of love with Mr Brown," said a GMB source. "They are angry over the failure to do more about agency workers and opening bosses to charges for corporate killings."