Labour party loyalists fight over UK PM's future

London: Prime Minister Gordon Brown's loyalists and detractors fought over his future on Sunday as the party that has ruled the UK for the past 12 years braced for a stinging rebuke in EU parliamentary elections.

Britain's left-leaning Labour Party, which faces a disaster at the European Union elections, is embroiled in a wrenching debate over whether its best chance of survival lies with or without its leader.

"We need unity above all," Charles Falconer, formerly Britain's top legal official, told BBC's Politics Show. ''Can we get unity under the current leadership? I am not sure that we can."

But senior Labour politicians have largely rallied behind their leader after several days of defections rocked Brown's inner circle.

Alan Johnson, only just promoted to Home Secretary, went on television to display his fealty.

"I don't agree that regicide gives you a unified party," he told the BBC.

Business Secretary Peter Mandelson told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that disgruntled Labourites needed to "stop taking shots at the prime minister because you are simply going to make the position of the party and the government even worse."

Brown lost 10 ministers in a series of dramatic walkouts over the past week. The resignations, coupled with calls from two of the outgoing ministers for Brown to step down, sent media into a frenzy of speculation that a coup was in the offing.

Editorial cartoons published in the Sunday newspapers showed Brown's back studded in daggers or drowning in sea of political turmoil.

But Brown, who spent 10 years in government waiting for predecessor Tony Blair to step aside, has shown no intention of leaving. In an assured appearance before Labour activists on Sunday, he said he owed it to recession-hit Britons to stay at the helm.

"What would they think of us if ever we walked away from them at a time of need?" he said.

Brown faces a critical test later on Sunday as the results of the European election come in, which could be even worse than local elections that saw Labour lose hundreds of seats and control of its last four English counties.

New Welsh Secretary Peter Hain told Sky News Sunday Live that he had no doubt that "the results are going to be terrible - there's no point beating about the bush on that - terrible for Labour."

But despite the continued sniping, one of Brown's traditional critics rallied to his support.

Labour lawmaker John Cruddas wrote in the Sunday Mirror that simply dumping Brown is "madness" that won't solve Labour's troubles - especially given that a general election has to be called within 12 months.

That contest is widely expected to deliver the country to Britain's right-leaning Conservatives.

"We're now less than a year away from the election," Cruddas wrote. "We have no more chances left. We either pull ourselves together, stake out what we stand for, or we will be gone."