Articles | Calls for Labour leadership contest

Brown faces leadership contest call

Published: Friday, 12 September 2008, 6:01PM

Gordon Brown has been plunged into crisis after one of his ministers demanded a leadership contest.

Junior whip Siobhain McDonagh, until now a loyal Labour MP, became the first member of the Government to call for a challenge.

A number of other MPs, including at least two former ministers, are also asking for leadership nomination papers ahead of this month's annual conference.

Ms McDonagh insisted a "huge number" of her colleagues in the Parliamentary party want the leadership issue out in the open.

The numbers involved in the current move - said by Labour officials to be in "single figures" - are well short of the 71 Labour MPs required to trigger a leadership election.

Ms McDonagh was replaced as an assistant whip, although Downing Street insisted she had not been fired.

The Mitcham and Morden MP, sister of Labour's former general secretary Baroness Margaret McDonagh, claimed somebody leaked a private request for the leadership nomination papers.

But she was able to confirm two other MPs involved as former ministers Joan Ryan and George Howarth.

She added that she did not want to disclose the names of the other MPs calling for a contest at this stage.

Ms McDonagh said: "We need a leadership election, I think anybody who wants to stand, should stand. We should have a discussion about what direction the party should be going in."

Other Labour MPs came out to insist that her views were that of a minority.

Tory frontbencher Chris Grayling said: "The Labour Party is quite clearly degenerating into a state of civil war. For a Prime Minister to have one of his own whips calling for a leadership contest is unprecedented."