Hain breaks ranks to warn Brown he is running out of time

Labour discontent with Gordon Brown's leadership bursts into the open today as the former cabinet loyalist Peter Hain breaks ranks to warn that the party is heading towards defeat unless it changes course and rediscovers its core values.

Mr Hain, who has remained studiously loyal since exiting the Cabinet last year, writing exclusively for The Independent on Sunday, says the Government under Mr Brown lacks "narrative" and has lost its way after three election victories under Tony Blair.

The intervention echoes simmering tensions among ministers as polls show Labour continues to suffer from the Government's handling of the recession. It will be seen as a thinly veiled attack on Mr Brown and raise renewed questions over his leadership. The move, along with an interview by Mr Hain in another newspaper, was being interpreted as the first shot in a fresh leadership crisis for the PM.

Related articles

• Peter Hain: Gordon, you are without a narrative
• Search the news archive for more stories

In a further development, it emerged that Mr Brown has ordered his colleagues to stop any leaks, following a series of damaging revelations of cabinet disagreements. He took the unusual step of issuing the warning amid signs of a concerted briefing campaign against Harriet Harman.

Mr Brown's attempt to reassert his authority underlines the deterioration in cabinet unity as he struggles to hold his Government together during the biggest economic and political crisis since Labour came to power. It also lays bare his fears that the widening splits in his Cabinet threaten his chances of emerging from the crisis with any prospect of winning the next general election.

In his article, Mr Hain, who resigned as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions last year over the Labour donations affair, says Mr Brown "can" win the next election, but only if he imposes radical change and a clear vision of where the party is heading.

"To win, Labour must be seen as the credible force for change, and that means changing itself – and there is not much time left," he writes. "There is no escaping that New Labour has lost five million voters – and not simply because of longevity in power. On basic

core-vote issues of affordable housing, job security, employment rights, crime and migration, Labour has to do much better and much more."

He adds: "Despite all Gordon Brown's best efforts and his excellent speech to the US Congress this week, Labour has not had a clear enough narrative right across government."

Mr Hain says that whatever the "individual policy merits" of ID cards, Trident, nuclear power, part-privatisation of the Royal Mail and Heathrow's third runway, they "do not add up to a programme to get the pulse of potential voters racing. Where is the story in all that, where is the distinctive Labour narrative, where are the Labour values of social justice and freedom?"

Mr Brown opened a cabinet "away day" in Southampton with a remarkable lecture about the dangers of allowing the contents of private discussions to enter the public domain. He ended his 10-minute dressing-down with a stern reminder that the whole Government would suffer critical damage if cabinet confidentiality were not preserved.

"He said we would all suffer if any more details leaked out," one cabinet minister revealed last night.

Mr Brown is believed to have been particularly angry about the revelation that Ms Harman, Labour's deputy leader, had been "slapped down" by colleagues, including Hazel Blears and John Hutton, when she suggested action to claw back bonuses already paid to failed bankers. A subsequent leak revealed a cabinet split over plans for a "moratorium" on any new laws – including moves to increase equality in the workplace – that could impose more costs on businesses.

"This is a time for a bit less Bill Clinton and a bit more Margaret Thatcher," a Downing Street strategist said last night. "The country doesn't want empathy, it wants to be led."

But details of Mr Brown's appeal to his colleagues emerged amid further signs of conflict over the succession if he is forced out. Ministers last night identified the Secretary of State for Children, Ed Balls – a close Brown ally – as the most likely opponent of a Harman leadership bid.

Mr Balls's admission that Labour had not been tough enough when regulating the banking sector in the years before the credit crisis was described as "pure positioning" by his rivals.

Mr Balls also gave a speech at a fundraising dinner for Ms Harman's deputy, Chris Bryant, last Wednesday. He joked that Mr Bryant "has done a good job, I wouldn't say controlling our Leader of the Commons [Ms Harman], but supporting her".

It has also emerged that Ms Harman, while Mr Brown was in the US, referred to herself as "duty prime minister". In a speech to Labour's Scottish conference in Dundee yesterday, she heaped praise on Mr Brown.

Ed Miliband, who is also seen as a possible leadership contender, told the conference that the party faced "testing times" and that the country needed "an economic vision, an environmental vision and a social vision".

Hain in the spotlight: Colourful campaigner who made headlines

* Born in Kenya in 1950, but brought up in South Africa.

* Arrived in the UK in the mid 1960s. studied at the University of London and Sussex University.

* Joined the Young Liberals, becoming chairman in 1971.

* Charged in 1974 with robbing a branch of Barclays Bank. Acquitted at trial.

* Helped to found the Anti-Nazi League, to campaign against the National Front and other far-right groups, in 1977. Joined the Labour Party in the same year.

* Elected MP for Neath at a by-election in 1991.

* Appointed junior minister at the Wales Office in 1997. Later served at the Foreign Office, before joining the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Wales in 2002, and later as Leader of the Commons, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and Work and Pensions.

* Forced to resign from the Cabinet in January 2008 over the late declaration of deputy leadership campaign donations.