LONDON - Foreign Secretary David Miliband indicated in an interview Saturday he nearly quit in a wave of resignations which left Prime Minister Gordon Brown fighting for his job last week.

Highlighting the ongoing threat to Brown's authority, Lord Peter Mandelson, effectively his deputy, predicted separately he would face another leadership challenge at the ruling Labour party's annual conference in September.

Brown endured the worst week of his rocky premiership after Labour suffered historic losses in European and local elections on June 4 which saw the resignation of 11 ministers amid calls for him to quit.

But he managed to hold on to power as no alternative candidate put themselves forward. Some commentators say that had Miliband -- reportedly behind a plot against Brown last year -- gone, Brown would have had to follow.

"Sometimes you can make your decisions with great planning and calculation and sometimes you have to make them rather more quickly," Miliband told the Guardian newspaper.

"I made my decision (not to resign) in good faith... we all have to live with our decisions."

Meanwhile, Mandelson told the Daily Telegraph there was a "small group" of rebels who "won't be reconciled to the prime minister's leadership" but added that he would not "lose any sleep" over the threat posed by them.

Opinion polls suggest Brown's government will be defeated by the main opposition Conservatives, led by David Cameron, in the next general election, which must be held by the middle of next year.

The Brown administration's popularity has been hit hard by a scandal over lawmakers claiming generous expenses from the public purse for the upkeep of their homes, which has dominated news headlines here for several weeks.

In a sign of how the story has angered Britons, the country's new poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy released her first verse in the job to the Guardian Saturday -- and it seemed to be a bitter reflection on the expenses row.

The poem from the royal family's official bard, entitled "Politics", includes the lines: "How it takes/the breath/away, the piss, makes of your kiss a dropped pound coin/makes of your promises latin, gibberish, feedback, static". -AFP