Seven quit within four hours: but is this a Brownite putsch?

Less than two hours later things got even worse. On the back of his meeting with Mr Brown, Blair authorised his press secretary to tell journalists at 11am that he would be “talking to” Tom Watson, his junior Defence Minister who signed the letter in breach of all government rules.

But Mr Watson was ahead of him and, at almost the same time, released a letter announcing his resignation from the Government.

“I no longer believe that your remaining in office is in the interest of either the party or the country,” he wrote to Mr Blair.

Rather than dismissing him as the junior minister he was, a furious Mr Blair took the extraordinary step of publicly dressing down Mr Watson.

In a statement he said that he had planned to dismiss Mr Watson, adding that for him to have signed such a letter was “disloyal, discourteous and wrong”.

But such a move — done in anger — elevated Mr Watson from one of the Government’s mostly lowly members into a magnified figure in the unfolding drama.

By lunchtime, even though Mr Blair had calmed down, events had gathered a momentum of their own. At 12.35pm, Khalid Mahmood was the second member of the Government to annouce his immediate departure.

He was followed later by Wayne David, Ian Lucas, Mark Tami and David Wright, in a joint letter that was released at 2.01pm.

They said in a statement: “We believe, however, that you have not ended the uncertainty over when you intend to leave office, which is damaging the Government and the Party. We have vitally important Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and English local authority elections next year and we must resolve this matter well in advance of these.”

A little later, at 2.35pm, Chris Mole, the other parliamentary private secretary to have signed the letter urging Mr Blair to go, added his name to their statement.

By lunchtime the Prime Minister struck a more reasoned tone as he released his formal letter in response to Tom Watson’s resignation, saying that he had already made clear he would go before the election, and that such divisive behaviour was neither sensible, mature nor intelligent.

In private, however, the war of words grew ever more vicious. Supporters of the Prime Minister pointed out that while the letter signed by 15 MPs was led by Blairites, notably Chris Bryant and Siôn Simon, most of its signatories were closer to Gordon Brown.

Mr Watson, for instance, was previously aide to the Treasury minister Dawn Primarolo and a Treasury whip; Mr Tami was aide to another Treasury minister, John Healy, and Kevan Jones worked closely with Nick Brown, one of the Chancellor’s closest supporters.

Moreover, Blairites said, several of the signatories had links to Amicus, the trade union whose leader, Derek Simpson, has been a staunch critic of the Prime Minister.

Both Mr Watson and Mr Tami were formerly officials of the AEEU, a forerunner of Amicus, and Mr Bryant, Mr Mahmood, Mr Simon, Mr David and Mr Lucas were all members of the union.

A senior Blair ally told The Times: “What we have here is an old-fashioned 1970s trade union putsch. It is a disgraceful attempt to blackmail the Prime Minister from office.

“People will judge Gordon on whether he acts to stop this. It could stop immediately if Gordon said it should stop. This has clearly been carefully choreographed. How would it help him if he comes to power on the back of a coup?” One of the signatories dismissed the suggestion of a union-orchestrated plot, saying that many of the Labour MPs first elected in 2001 had union links, and attacked Mr Blair’s staff in Downing Street as “junior Taleban” obsessed with the media.

Those who signed the letter knew they would have to resign if it was made public, but it had been intended as a private communication, the MP said, and accused Downing Street of leaking it.

“This is the way these junior Talebans in No 10 think they should do their politics,” the MP said in a contemptuous tone.

Asked whether Mr Brown’s circle was aware of the letter, the MP said: “For me, it has got to the point where it is not a matter of who leads the party; it is whether we have a party to lead.

“We have Scottish and Welsh elections, we have local elections in England. If we are decimated in these we will lose the bedrock of the party, councillors. We will be like the Tories. Morale is rock-bottom and the party’s membership is declining.”

Mr Blair and Mr Brown met again in the early afternoon, by which time tempers were calmer and their discussion was more positive as they went though the practicalities of what both understood by a stable and orderly transition.

Much later in the day, Mr Blair was forced to telephone the Chancellor and tell him that the poisonous briefings directed at Mr Brown were not supported or sanctioned by him, in a sign of just how badly things threatened to spiral out of control.

The acrimony continued across the airwaves as Labour MPs put the Prime Minister under increasing pressure to confirm that he would be gone within a year — or sooner. Doug Henderon, a former minister also close to the Chancellor, called on Mr Blair to resign some time in the autumn, or next spring. “I think people, when they vote next May, will want to know what the Labour Party will do in the future, not what it has done in the past,” Mr Henderson told The World At One on BBC Radio 4.

“I think they will want to see a new leader in place by then, so people can judge the Labour Party in a forward way rather than looking at the legacy of what we have done over the last nine years.”

Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, issued a plea for calm, calling it “madness” for some Labour MPs to demand conditions from the Prime Minister. But, trying to ride two horses at once, she added: “It is equal madness for others to suggest that Gordon Brown must be tied down to a ‘Blairite’ programme for the next ten years before he can become leader.”

By early evening the Chief Whip was giving interviews to criticise the plotters behind letters calling on Mr Blair to go, saying that this was not Labour’s way.

‘MY LOYALTY TO YOU HAS BEEN ABSOLUTE, BUT FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR LEGACY I URGE YOU TO GO’

TOM WATSON’S LETTER

Dear Tony,

The Labour Party has been my life since I was 15 years old. I have served the Party at every conceivable level and your own leadership since 1994 in a dozen capacities. My loyalty to you personally, as well as to the Party and the values we stand for, has been absolute and unswerving.

My pride in what our government has achieved under your leadership is beyond expression. Your leadership has been visionary and remarkable. The party and the nation owe you an incalculable debt.

So it is with the greatest sadness that I have to say that I no longer believe that your remaining in office is in the interest of either the party or the country. How and why this situation has arisen no longer matters. I share the view of the overwhelming majority of the party and the country that the only way the Party and the Government can renew itself in office is urgently to renew its leadership.

For the sake of the legacy you have long said is the only one that matters — a renewed Labour party re-elected at the next general election — I urge you to reconsider your determination to remain in office.

As you know, I had a conversation with the Chief Whip last night, in which she asked me to withdraw my support from the 2001 intake’s letter calling on you to stand down, or my position would be untenable as a government minister. I have reflected on this overnight. I cannot withdraw my name, and therefore I accept her judgement.

I do not believe that statements so far give us the clarity necessary to progress over the next year. Nor do I believe that newspaper reports of potential dates which may have appeared since I signed the letter can provide the clarity the party and the country so desperately need.

It is with the greatest regret, therefore, that I must leave the Government.

Yours ever, Tom Watson MP

TONY BLAIR’S STATEMENT

I have heard from the media that Tom Watson has resigned.

I had been intending to dismiss him, but wanted to extend to him the courtesy of speaking to him first.

Had he come to me privately and expressed his view about the leadership, that would have been one thing.

But to sign a round-robin letter which was then leaked to the press was disloyal, discourteous and wrong.

It would therefore have been impossible for him to remain in Government.