London, Dec 31, IRNA , Senior cabinet colleagues of Prime Minister Gordon Brown have warned the government will have to rid its image of “incompetence” in the new year to regain its lost support.
Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell suggested that Brown needed to change his leadership style of governing that showed his human side, saying that there was no quick fix to restore his Government’s battered standing.
“The most important thing for any prime minister is to be authentic and to be yourself and I think Gordon Brown should feel complete freedom to be himself, and that is how the British people will get to know him,” Jowell told The Sunday Telegraph.
Another senior cabinet ally admitted that the priority for the Government in 2008 would be to restore credibility after a series of debacles over lost data and the illegal use of “proxy” donors to raise Labour funds which could lead to criminal charges.
“We have to knock on the head the appearance of incompetence in the Government,” an unnamed minister was quoted saying by the Independent newspaper Monday.
“You cannot do that while working next to someone who is breaking the law over party funding or records on 25 million people go missing,” the minister warned.
The Financial Times columnist Philip Stephens put the growing concern about Brown’s performance after only six months, saying the premiership was his lifetime ambition, but that “now he has got there he seems not at all certain what he wants to do.”
In his New Year message, opposition Conservative leader David Cameron said that there was a feeling it was “time for a change” in Britain but warned against complacency not expecting Brown to call a general election until 2009 at the earliest.
“This will be the year in which we show that there is hope for the future: that there is a clear and credible alternative to this hopeless and incompetent Labour government,” Cameron said.
In response, Justice Secretary Jack Straw admitted that the appealing messages by the opposition leader had been “resonating” with British voters.