Milburn warns of 'fog of doubt'

Tony Blair's closest allies today mobilised to defend him at a critical moment - and to get New Labour back on the road.

On the eve of Mr Blair's most hazardous party conference yet, two former Cabinet ministers, Alan Milburn and Stephen Byers, urged him to get back to the domestic agenda and not to buckle.

Mr Byers called on the Prime Minister to follow the example of Margaret Thatcher who, when under maximum pressure, "held her nerve and came out fighting".

Writing in The Independent, he concedes Mr Blair has been forced on to the back foot by the furore over the Hutton Inquiry, last week's by-election defeat in Brent East, and the belief that the public services are still in a mess. He warns: "We have been on the defensive; now is the time to begin setting the political agenda once again."

Mr Milburn, writing in The Guardian, says the party is at a crossroads with a "fog of doubt" overhanging the Prime Minister. But the answer "means keeping the foot on the accelerator of reform in health and education".

Mr Milburn, who stepped down as health secretary in June for family reasons, and Mr Byers, forced out after civil war in his transport department, were two of the Cabinet's leading modernisers.

A third loyalist, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, delivered her own warning yesterday to Mr Blair to concentrate-on the key issues important to the voters. Their demand to Mr Blair to be bold pitches them against some, including allies of Chancellor Gordon Brown urging the Prime Minister to "consolidate".

But it is already clear that Mr Blair, in his language at least, will stick to the reform road when he delivers his conference speech in Bournemouth next Tuesday. He has spent much of the week at Chequers writing and rewriting the text and conferring, mostly by phone, with trusted advisers in Downing Street and beyond. The need to push on with education reforms has emerged as a key theme. But that runs the risk of bringing Mr Blair into confrontation with the large section of his party bitterly opposed to plans for university top-up fees.

Both Mr Milburn and Mr Byers acknowledge that the wake of the Iraq war and the Hutton Inquiry have greatly deepened the Prime Minister's problems.

Lord Hutton yesterday completed the taking of evidence on the circumstances surrounding the death of weapons scientist David Kelly. But he warned he will not be ready to deliver his report, a moment of high danger for both the Government and the BBC, until late November or December.

Mr Byers says Mr Blair's plight is remarkably similar to the hazards faced by Lady Thatcher as she approached her third election in 1987.

Her government had been destabilised by the Westland affair, she was behind in the opinion polls and facing a difficult party conference. Her answer was to use that conference to proclaim "the next move forward".