It was one of the best speeches I have heard him make.”A left-wing rebel MP conceded that Mr Blair’s performance had answered some of the anger felt at the destructive rivalry between Mr Blair and Mr Brown. Some of Mr Brown’s allies also arrived late, but forced their way into the room to give the Chancellor their support.A minister said: “Blair was brilliant He did exactly what he had to do. It has to stop.”The hour-long meeting was so packed that some ministers had to stand outside in the corridor and missed Mr Blair’s speech. Mr Sheerman warned that the splits could damage Labour support.Stephen Pound, a backbencher, said: “Virtually every MP raised the [leadership] issue because it’s becoming quite poisonous. There is a lot of anger because it could jeopardise what we are doing.”The former maverick Labour MP, Lord Campbell-Savours, told Mr Brown he should repudiate the most damaging section of the book, Brown’s Britain by Robert Peston, that Mr Blair could never be trusted again.”If you did not say it, deny it; if you did, withdraw it,” he said.Mr Blair told the MPs: “I know from everyone here in Cabinet and Government nothing is going to get in the way of a unified Labour Party with a unified position and winning the third term people desperately need.”Alongside Mr Blair and Mr Brown on the top table was the vast majority of the Cabinet, including John Prescott, the deputy Prime Minister, who is furious at the continued power struggle, which he has tried to avoid. Also at the meeting were Hilary Armstrong, the Labour chief whip, a strong supporter of the Prime Minister, John Reid, the Health Secretary, and Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, who last summer persuaded Mr Blair not to carry out his threat to stand down before the general election.Mr Reid criticised Mr Brown yesterday, suggesting he was motivated by personal ambition Another minister said: “It is a sort of madness. They sat side by side to emphasise that they were determined not to allow the tensions over the leadership to destroy Labour’s campaign for the general election.However, Mr Brown and his supporters had to endure a barrage of criticism from Labour MPs who fear the Chancellor’s ambitions to replace Mr Blair have jeopardised their seats at the general election.Warnings that the party needed to be united, and to avoid damaging splits were made by Clive Soley, the former chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party and Barry Sheerman, and Claire Ward, Blairite supporters with highly marginal seats that Labour will have to hold on to in order to secure a third massive majority.Mr Soley expressed the frustrations in the Parliamentary Labour Party at the warring factions.

Furious Labour MPs attacked Gordon Brown last night for putting marginal seats at risk with his ambition to replace Tony Blair. They spoke out as the Prime Minister made a direct appeal for unity from the Chancellor’s supporters who were blamed for stoking the rivalry between the two men.
Mr Blair and Mr Brown buried their differences with a show of unity at a packed meeting of Labour MPs in room 14 on the committee corridor of the Commons. But Labour’s lead is neither so large nor so secure that it can afford continuing tension at the top.John Curtice is professor of politics at Strathclyde University.. But the lead is three points down on our previous poll in November. And equally importantly, it is three points less than at the 2001 election. Some Labour MPs in marginal seats look as though they will not be around to enjoy the third term.Yet according to our poll, they would be returned if Mr Blair had in fact fulfilled his alleged promise to hand the leadership over to Mr Brown last autumn.

Fifty per cent say they would vote Labour if Mr Brown were to become leader, enough to give the party a lead of more than 20 points over the Conservatives. The prospect of Mr Brown becoming leader appears to be particularly attractive to those currently minded to vote Liberal Democrat, one in five of whom say they would switch to Labour if Mr Brown were leader. Doubtless, a significant proportion of these are former Labour voters who are disenchanted with the current Blairite regime.Hitherto, most polls have suggested that a change of Labour leader would have at most a small impact on Labour’s fortunes But that is apparently no longer so. Even if we were to treat our respondents’ reactions with some scepticism and suggest that not all would actually change their mind in the event of Mr Brown becoming leader, our findings certainly indicate that Mr Brown has a positive image among a crucial section of the electorate – an image that if effectively deployed could help to save the careers of some Labour MPs in marginal seats.In any event, our findings seem unlikely to help ease the tensions between the Blair and the Brown camps. The sense of grievance evidently felt by the latter can only be stoked by the thought that their man could now be the more attractive electorally. Labour MPs in marginal seats are, it seems, on the horns of a dilemma.