Hazel Blears savages Gordon Brown over 'lamentable' failures

The first cracks in Gordon Brown's cabinet appear today as a senior minister attacks his government's "lamentable" failure to communicate and warns of "dire" consequences if it continues to blunder on policy and misread the mood of the British people.

After a disastrous week in which the prime minister suffered his first Commons defeat and was forced into a humiliating retreat over MPs' expenses, the communities secretary, Hazel Blears, openly criticises the government's handling of the Gurkhas issue and says that voters no longer believe many of its big policy announcements.

In a clear reference to the prime minister, who has been ridiculed for his appearance on YouTube, the strongly Blairite cabinet minister says such use of "new media" by politicians is far less effective than old-fashioned campaigning. "YouTube if you want to," she says in an article in today's Observer. "But it is no substitute for knocking on doors or setting up a stall in the town centre."

However, it is her savage criticism of the government's failure to connect with the instincts of the British people that is most devastating. On the issue of the Gurkhas' rights to settle in this country, she says the government put itself "on the wrong side of the British sense of fair play, and no party can stay there for long without dire consequences".

While she says Brown will lead the party into the next election and that Labour has the "right policies", she argues that the government has to appear more "human". "Labour ministers have a collective responsibility for the government's lamentable failure to get our message across," she says.

"All too often we announce new strategies, five-year plans, or launch new documents, often with colossal price tags attached, which are received by the public with incredulity at best and at worst hostility. Whatever the problems of the recession, the answer is not more government documents or big speeches."

Most ministers, and a majority of Labour MPs, are playing down suggestions that Brown could face a leadership challenge, or be asked by a cabinet delegation to step down, if Labour suffers a mauling in local and European elections on 4 June. Blears's remarks nonetheless reflect growing disquiet at all levels of the party.

Up to now, cabinet ministers have remained studiously loyal to Brown, despite a terrible month that saw the sacking of his political adviser Damian McBride for trying to smear leading Tories, widespread criticism of the budget and chaos over Gurkhas' rights and MPs' expenses.

Now the Blears intervention suggests that discipline is breaking down. A senior party figure said Blears was "making her move" and believed she could lead the party. "She thinks she is the one. She is part of a very active rightwing faction within the party which has a lot support among women MPs and in the student wing. She knows precisely what she is doing. You have to say she is brave."

The former education secretary, Ruth Kelly, writing for the Observer's website, joins Blears in demanding a greater focus on domestic reform, in a further sign of anxiety and unrest among Blairites.

Kelly stood down from the cabinet last year amid rumours that was she was unhappy with Brown's leadership, but has done nothing to criticise the prime minister since. Now she says: "Somehow in the immediacy of the economic crisis, New Labour's strong message on public service reform, on devolution and on climate change has got lost in the fog."

Last night Blears, whose comments will infuriate No 10, hastily put out a statement that she had not intended them as a criticism of Brown.

"I want to make it clear that the Prime Minster enjoys my 100% support. Any suggestion that I intended what I wrote as criticism of him or his leadership is completely wrong," she said.

With Brown's problems piling up, pressure is also growing on ministers to drop controversial plans to part-privatise Royal Mail, which are opposed by more than 120 Labour MPs. The legislation is due to return the Commons days after the European and council polls.

Government sources denied that ministers were about to pull the plug on the reforms, which they insisted were essential. But Labour MP John Grogan, a leading member of the leftwing Compass Group, said: "It would be a kamikaze move for Brown to reintroduce it to the Commons in June."