LONDON, ENGLAND - BRITISH Prime Minister Gordon Brown will seek to relaunch his listing premiership this week, but efforts were hampered on Monday by more attacks on his character after a weekend of embarrassing revelations.

In an effort to pull the focus away from the damaging personal attacks and disastrous poll results, Mr Brown is to set out plans for new reforms in health and education, starting with an announcement on social care Monday.

But as the media chewed over a weekend of sniping from the top corridors of power and a cabinet member pleaded for the backstabbing to stop, Frank Field, an ex-colleague and former welfare reform minister, put the boot in.

Branding him 'frustrating, annoying, bewildering and prickly', Mr Prescott said a 'furious' Brown would either sulk or explode like a 'volcano'.

Field told BBC radio he had been on the receiving end of Brown's 'tempers of indescribable nature. Shouts, rage.

'The awful fact that is coming across is that... the prime minister looks so unhappy inside his own body and it conveys the most dismal message to people.'

'I think that's a mega problem for him and the government.'

He said he would be 'very surprised' if Mr Brown led their governing centre-left Labour Party into the next general election, which he predicted would be held in May 2010 - the last possible moment.

Unless they are reassured, 'there's enough members on the Labour back benches who will with others block the budget going through and that will make his position intolerable', he said.

Health Secretary Alan Johnson defended Brown, expressing his frustration that the political agenda was being dominated by criticism of the premier.

'I think people are tired of this character assassination,' he told BBC radio as he acknowledged the 'damage' being done by 'all these knives coming out.

'I'm not a great Brown Fan Club leader but I respect him as a really, really decent, good, able politician.

'Is he perfect? no he's not, nor is anyone else in the world.'

'Some people see an opportunity to just put the knife into somebody they dislike.'

Labour were battered in local elections on May 1 and an opinion poll out Thursday put the party on 26 per cent, the lowest since poll records began in the 1930s, with the main opposition Conservatives 26 points ahead, their best since 1968.

Ditching the 10 per cent lowest tax bracket infuriated Labour backbenchers, while Brown faces further clashes with them over plans to let police hold terror suspects for 42 days without charge.

Furthermore, opinion polls predict Labour will suffer the embarrassment of losing a safe seat in a May 22 parliamentary by-election.

Lord Levy told The Daily Telegraph newspaper that he thought Brown should consider his position, saying it was 'a question that Gordon really needs to reflect on' and that he was 'stunned' by the polls.

In its editorial, The Daily Telegraph said two things stood out from the autobiography anecdotes: 'The sheer loathing with which key protagonists of New Labour viewed each other; and the extent to which the public good has played second fiddle to the pursuit of personal rivalries.'

Mr Brown 'appears genuinely baffled by his predicament', which only he can resolve, the broadsheet said.

'He has to find a new voice, walk a little taller, act a little bolder. His fate is in his hands and he must seize it now.'

Meanwhile, The Sun newspaper said in its editorial that 'If they made a film of Gordon Brown's premiership so far, it would have to be called 'Death Wish''. -- AFP