Now the unions turn on Brown

The leader of the trade union movement accused Gordon Brown of lacking a vision for Britain on the eve of a by-election today which could trigger a crisis of confidence in the Prime Minister.

In the most important parliamentary by-election since Labour came to power, the voters of Crewe and Nantwich will deliver their verdict on the Brown government. Many Labour MPs fear a humiliating defeat which would spark an open debate about whether Mr Brown is the right man to lead the party into the general election.

Brendan Barber, the TUC's general secretary, added to Mr Brown's problems last night by making a withering assault on his strategy. Calling on New Labour to "reconfigure its DNA", he said the party "has not been clear about what it wants to be – and where it now wants to go", adding that "the support base that Labour brought together in 1997 needs convincing that the party is on their side and fairness must once again be asserted".

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The normally loyal Mr Barber urged Mr Brown to set out his priorities rather than rely on a raft of small-scale initiatives. He said there should be "no retreat to the failures of the 1970s or 1980s, nor a fall into the trap of 1,000 policy launches and initiatives. Instead, the Government needs to find the courage again to make the case for the most enduring Labour values – equality, fairness and social justice".

He told the Labour modernisers' group Progress that Mr Brown should reconnect with the party's natural supporters by staking a stand against "casino capitalism". He said: "The Government will not win the battle to convince the nation of its commitment to greater fairness for those at the bottom unless it discovers a new boldness in challenging the corporate and personal greed at the top. That means a new commitment to tax fairness and clamping down on the loopholes currently being exploited by the super-rich and the City. In short, reconfiguring the DNA of New Labour for a different age."

In another sign of unease among the unions, Mr Brown was warned that he faced a wave of summer strikes by public-sector workers, including civil servants, firefighters, teachers and college lecturers. The Public and Commercial Services Union announced a strike ballot of 280,000 civil servants over the Government's 2 per cent pay limit.

The threat of a "summer of discontent" emerged on the day that the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, suffered abuse and ridicule from rank-and-file police officers as anger boiled over at their annual conference in Bournemouth over her refusal to meet their pay increase in full.

She sat stony-faced as Jan Berry, the chairman of the Police Federation, berated her for "betraying" the service and breaching the trust between police and the Government. As the two women shared a stage at the conference, Mrs Berry mockingly referred to the Home Secretary's admission that she smoked cannabis as a student. She said: "Your recent crimes have been more for the serious fraud office than the drug squad."

Mrs Berry tore into the Home Secretary over the Government's decision to meet a 2.5 per cent pay increase in instalments, reducing it in effect to 1.9 per cent. Police officers have voted to abandon their historic no-strike agreement and could stage their first walkout for 90 years. The High Court is due to rule next month on the legality of the Government's stance.

In Crewe, Labour enjoyed a 7,078 majority at the last election and has held it since the Second World War. It is 165th on the Tories' target list of seats and they need a swing of 8.2 per cent to win it – more than the 6.9 per cent swing David Cameron needs to win the next general election.

Despite that, the Tories are odds-on favourites to gain their first seat from Labour in a parliamentary by-election since 1978 and their first from another party since 1982. Labour's campaign to portray the Tory candidate, Edward Timpson, as a "Tory toff" has backfired. But Labour MPs said yesterday that the party's expected defeat would have little to do with its tactics locally.

One senior Labour figure said: "Crewe is about the economy, the abolition of the 10p tax rate and Gordon Brown."

The scale of the panic in Labour's ranks tomorrow will depend on the size of the expected Tory majority. A crushing defeat could plunge Mr Brown into his most severe crisis since he became Prime Minister 11 months ago. Some Labour backbenchers could go public with demands for him to stand down.

However, a concerted move to push him out is thought unlikely at this stage. While many Labour MPs are privately discussing how they might move against Mr Brown, a majority believes that he should be given until Labour's annual conference in September to close the opinion poll gap with the revitalised Tories.

"Crewe could be the tipping point; things can happen very quickly," one former minister said yesterday. "But most of us think that if it happens, it will happen in the autumn."

Mr Brown has already lined up his defences. The Commons is not sitting tomorrow and is in recess next week. So the scope for plotting will be limited and the Crewe by-election may have faded by the time MPs return to Westminster on 2 June.

Mr Brown's allies say it will be "business as usual" for the Prime Minister tomorrow – a clear sign that he would not respond to a disaster in Crewe with a snap cabinet reshuffle. Ministers admit the £2.7bn compensation package for losers from the 10p tax debacle has made little impact on voters in Crewe. They concede that people will not notice the tax cuts announced last week until they see them in their pay packets in September.

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