The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, London

Prime Minister Gordon Brown's party faces electoral meltdown if it carries on "fighting like ferrets in a sack" instead of regrouping after a bruising week, a key minister warned Saturday.

Tessa Jowell, the minister for London and the Olympics, told The Daily Telegraph newspaper that the centre-left Labour Party might well "give up" on government if it did not stamp out internal division.

Brown was left counting the cost this weekend after a week in which his authority over the Labour Party was put on the line-amid a fuel crisis and right ahead of Thursday's bellwether local and London mayoral elections.He was forced into making concessions over abolishing the 10 percent starting rate of income tax, with Labour backbenchers planning to rebel in big enough numbers to inflict defeat on the government in a parliamentary vote.