Labour split 'lets Tories off hook'

Gordon Brown's closest Cabinet ally Ed Balls has issued a plea to Labour to unite and turn its fire on the Conservatives.

The Schools Secretary warned that party divisions were "letting the Tories off the hook" and allowing them to pursue a strategy of winning power by stealth, without producing a policy agenda for scrutiny.

Conservative calls for an early general election were motivated by a desire to fight the campaign as a referendum on MPs' expenses, he said.

Mr Balls' intervention in an article in The Guardian comes as Labour seeks to take the fight to the Conservatives after weeks in which the party has been mired in wrangling over the leadership.

Following Mr Brown's branding of David Cameron as "Mr 10%", he repeated the Labour claim that Tories would slash spending on public services by a tenth if they took power.

Mr Balls wrote: "If the last few weeks teach us anything it is that a Labour Party divided and turning in on itself simply lets the Tories off the hook.

"Less than a year before the election, the Opposition have not been subject to anything like the kind of scrutiny they deserve - or that Labour was put under before 1997.

"David Cameron is playing the public for fools and, frankly, the centre-left have let him get away with it for too long. We must now unite and turn our fire on the Tories."

Mr Balls said Conservatives had so far declined to match Labour's pledge to fund school, college or training places for every under-18 who wanted one, despite repeated calls to do so.

He claimed the Tories were "prepared to abandon a whole generation of young people", 55,000 of whom would lose funding for education and training if Mr Cameron won power.