GORDON Brown was yesterday compared to a Mafia boss by one of his own MPs because of the way he is suspected of ordering the political "assassination" of his Labour Party rivals.
Jane Kennedy, who quit as an environment minister last month in protest at smears she believes came from Downing Street, backed the suggestion that the Prime Minister oversaw attacks on party colleagues.
She was one of a number of female Labour MP
s to go public with their criticism of Mr Brown, who was also accused of running a "laddish" operation at the heart of government and also of failing to promote women to the Cabinet.
Ms Kennedy said she agreed with a Labour spin doctor's view that Mr Brown was like a Mafia boss: not pulling the trigger, but knowing who gets "bumped off".
She said: "He has, and always has had, a group of people around him that have been engaged in undermining Labour people.
"The way in which people are undermined is usually very personal; it's a very personal attack and it's very distasteful.
"He engages with a darker side of himself and he believes that the end justifies the means."
Caroline Flint – who, when she quit as Europe minister last month, accused the Prime Minister of treating women MPs as "window dressing" – said women had been "picked out" for anonymous briefings to the media by Mr Brown's allies.
"It hasn't been pleasant," she said.
Another former minister, Beverley Hughes, warned that another leadership challenge to Mr Brown may come if his personal ratings, and Labour's support, did not pick up in the autumn. "If there isn't, then the questions about leadership will inevitably rise again," she said.
Ms Kennedy also believed the party's general election chances were bleak: "With Gordon as leader we don't have much chance."
And Patricia Hewitt, the Blairite former health secretary, urged Mr Brown to "get a move on" with promises he made to the Parliamentary Labour Party last month to learn from his mistakes.
At the time, Mr Brown was fighting for his political life after a series of ministerial resignations, including those of James Purnell, Hazel Blears and Jacqui Smith, in the wake of the MPs' expenses scandal.
Ms Hewitt said Mr Brown was "Presbyterian" and "very, very serious and intellectual" in his approach.
She said he had never been part of movements in the 1960s and 1970s urging gay rights and equality for women.
Apart from close aides Sue Nye and Baroness Vadera, he had relied on a male inner circle that was "really rather laddish in its culture," Ms Hewitt added.
Baroness Jay, a former Labour leader in the House of Lords, said she found Mr Brown "quite intimidating".
But Labour MP Angela Smith denied Ms Kennedy's claim that Downing Street ran smear campaigns. "Jane's a close friend of mine," she said. "I just think she's wrong on that one."
