THE TIMES THURSDAY 4th

Bodyblow for Gordon Brown as Charles Clarke suggests he 'stand down'



Gordon Brown suffered a bodyblow to his authority this morning when Charles Clarke, the former Home Secretary, said he should "stand down as Prime Minister with honour" if he failed to prove himself in the coming months.
In what constitutes the first call from a Labour heavyweight for the Prime Minister to consider his position, Mr Clarke made his call in a series of television and radio interviews and in an article written for the New Statesman magazine.
Mr Clarke said that the party would not allow Mr Brown to lead it to “utter destruction” at the next election, stressing that many Labour MPs had memories of the party's defeats of 1979 and 1983 to Margaret Thatcher which left it in the political wilderness.
The former Cabinet minister, who as a key Blairite was known to have long been sceptical of a Brown premiership, told BBC Radio 4 that there were two possibilities for the Prime Minister in the coming months.