LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Gordon Brown survived a challenge to his authority yesterday, winning over Labour members of parliament after admitting mistakes and taking responsibility for a week of political turmoil.
Addressing Labour’s 350 MPs a day after his party suffered a resounding defeat in European elections, Brown expressed contrition but said he was determined to fight on as leader after one of the most difficult weeks of his premiership.
“I know I need to improve,” Brown told the MPs, according to a spokesman. “I have my strengths and I have my weaknesses. There are some things I can do well, some not so well.
“You solve the problem not by walking away but by facing it and doing something about it,” he said, earning cheers and applause from the majority in the room, according to witnesses.
Several senior Labour members, including well-known critic Charles Clarke, a former interior minister, called for Brown to step down. However, most threw their weight behind him ahead of a general election due within a year which the opposition centre-right Conservatives are tipped to win.
The head of Labour’s parliamentary group, Tony Lloyd, said he now saw little chance of Brown being ousted from office.
“I do not believe there will be any challenge to Gordon Brown within our party,” he told Sky News.
Others who attended the meeting and are regarded as Brown critics said the prime minister had been “put on probation”, suggesting there would be no immediate further challenge to his leadership.
Brown, in power since 2007 when he took over from Tony Blair in mid-term, has been under pressure since a parliamentary expenses scandal caused popular disillusion with politics and particularly the party that has been in power for 12 years.
The unrest prompted six senior ministers to resign last week and led to a cabinet reshuffle in which Brown sought to reassert his authority, only to have it undermined again by Sunday’s European election results in which Labour took its smallest share of a national vote in nearly 100 years.
The collapse in the Labour vote in the European Parliament election, which followed a dismal showing in local government elections last week, helped the far-right British National Party win its first two seats in the assembly.
Labour won 15.7 percent of the European vote, behind the anti-EU UK Independence Party with 16.5 percent and the Conservatives with 27.7 percent.
