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UK PM Brown battles to hold on in face of revolt
Fri Jun 5, 2009 2:33am EDT
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By Adrian Croft
LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was battling for his political life on Friday after a third senior minister quit his government and urged Brown to stand down to avert an election defeat.
The resignation of Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell, announced in a letter printed by The Times newspaper, was a direct attack on Brown's authority and increased the possibility of a challenge to his leadership.
Early results pointed to heavy losses for Brown's Labour party in Thursday's local elections, heaping yet more pressure on the embattled prime minister.
With an increasing number of Labour politicians openly calling for Brown to go, analysts said the prime minister could be fatally wounded.
Poor results in elections to the European Parliament, held on Thursday but not due for release until Sunday, could be the final blow, Simon Lee, a politics expert at Hull University, said.
"Even if between now and Sunday, no other cabinet minister follows Purnell's example, if results are as bad as seems likely it will be very hard for Gordon Brown to survive," he told Reuters.
Voters are feeling pain from the worst recession since World War Two and many wanted to punish Labour, in power since 1997, for a scandal over politicians' abuse of their expense accounts.
The opposition Conservatives, who lead Labour by up to 20 percentage points in opinion polls, stepped up calls for an immediate national election, saying Brown's government was "paralyzed."
Some commentators likened Brown's situation to that of former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was forced out in 1990 after a key minister resigned.
CALL TO STEP DOWN
Purnell, a rising Labour star, told Brown he believed his leadership made it more likely the center-right Conservatives would win a national election, due in the next year.
"I am therefore calling on you to stand aside to give our party a fighting chance of winning," he wrote.
Purnell said he was not seeking the party leadership but his dramatic intervention could embolden a challenger to emerge.
Purnell was the third cabinet minister this week to resign, following communities minister Hazel Blears and Britain's first female interior minister Jacqui Smith.
His resignation deepened splits in Labour ranks. Continued...
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