BRITAIN: Former cabinet ministers Charles Clarke and Alan Milburn will fuel speculation about a heavyweight challenge to Gordon Brown's leadership claim today when they launch a website debate about Labour's future.
News of their intervention came yesterday against the backdrop of another opinion poll giving the Conservatives, on 40 per cent, a full 11-point lead over Britain's governing party.
Mr Clarke and Mr Milburn - both of whom have previously been canvassed as possible leadership contenders when prime minister Tony Blair stands down later this year - consulted Mr Brown about their initiative on Monday. Former home secretary David Blunkett was among those suggesting the chancellor was "relaxed" about the call by former colleagues for "an open participatory debate" about Labour's future post-Blair.
However, senior Blairites said the potential significance of the Clarke-Milburn move would not be lost on the chancellor, coming as it does after a number of polls suggesting Mr Brown is less popular with voters than Mr Blair and a Times newspaper survey showing "a marked lack of enthusiasm" among some Labour MPs at the prospect of a Brown succession.
Mr Brown, meanwhile, was accused of "headline grabbing" yesterday after a speech suggesting that migrants should be required to carry out some form of community work before being granted British citizenship.
Mr Brown said his earlier suggestion for immigrants to be required to speak English as a condition of their citizenship was now widely accepted. In a keynote speech, he said more needed to be done and spoke of a "contract" between Britain as host country and those seeking to join it.
"Being a British citizen is about more than a test, more than a ceremony; it's a kind of contract between the citizen and the country involving rights but also involving responsibilities that will protect and enhance the British way of life."
Mr Brown suggested that obliging migrants to carry out community work would help introduce them to those they would be living alongside, while also demonstrating to the host community that new immigrants would contribute to society as a whole.
Again pressing the debate about what it means to be British, Mr Brown said it was vital in order to "build an even stronger sense of national purpose that can unify us, bring us together, bring social cohesion, and a greater sense of national purpose in the years to come".
Conservative spokesman David Davis said this was "a headline-grabbing initiative of very little substance" which might actually prove damaging and anyway ignored the fact that "the problem is not with those applying for citizenship but with the number of illegal immigrants coming into the country."
Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell also described Mr Brown's proposal as a gimmick which would be impossible to enforce.
Habib Rahman of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, meanwhile, observed that compulsory community service was "usually imposed as a non-custodial penalty for a criminal offence".
At his monthly Downing Street press conference yesterday, Mr Blair said Mr Brown had raised some "good and interesting ideas", while telling Labour MPs it would be odd for them to be worried by mid-term polls.
Asked if remaining in office might be damaging his successor's chances at the next general election, Mr Blair said: "There will be ample time for my successor to do what they think is right." At the same time, he said, Labour had to have "the right policies for the future" - seeming to echo the concern set out by Mr Clarke and Mr Milburn in an e-mail to all Labour MPs.
Without reference to the question of the leadership vacancy, the former ministers said: "After 10 years in office we will need to demonstrate that we have the vision and the policies to successfully meet the future challenges faced by our country and the wider world." From their discussions with fellow MPs, they said, they believed there was now "an enormous appetite for the debate to be taken forward and given more focus".