Gordon Brown’s opponents will have only three working days to mobilise support for a challenger under a leadership election timetable agreed by Labour’s ruling body yesterday.

The rules for the contest should give the Chancellor a huge advantage. He remains the overwhelming favourite. His critics are unable so far to find a champion willing to stand.

The party’s National Executive Committee rejected calls for Mr Brown to take part in a leadership ballot even if he was the only candidate, fearing that it would attract ridicule.

Instead, the Chancellor will be required to attend five official hustings – even if he is unchallenged – and put his case to be leader alongside candidates for the deputy leadership.

The NEC also effectively killed off chances of a deal for new controls on party funding, saying that Labour’s links to trade unions must be respected and that an inquiry by Sir Hayden Phillips did “not appear to live up to this objective”. Sir Hayden, a former top civil servant, proposed a £50,000 cap on all donations but suggested that union affiliation fees to Labour be treated as donations from each individual member. But Mike Griffiths, the NEC’s chairman, said: “Any donations cap that in effect breaks Labour’s link with the trade unions would be a nonstarter.”

Under the agreed procedural guidelines, the NEC will meet to set the dates for the contest within 72 hours of Tony Blair’s formal announcement of his resignation, probably soon after the May 3 local elections.

From the NEC’s meeting, which will mark the official opening of the contest, MPs will have three sitting days of the Commons to submit nominations for candidates, who will need the backing of 45 MPs.

The contest will run for a further six weeks, during which local Labour parties, members and trade unions will be able to make “supporting nominations”, with ballot papers sent out in the final two weeks.

Labour will spend about £500,000 on the process but expects to raise up to £100,000 from sources such as attendance fees for a special conference of parliamentarians, trade unions and constituency members at which the new leader and deputy will be formally declared.

The idea of forcing Mr Brown to take part in an “affirmative ballot” even if there were no other contender had been touted to address the clamour from many rank-and-file members to debate the party’s future direction.

But the Chancellor’s allies were aghast, fearing that if his name were the only one on a ballot paper the exercise would be mocked as akin to elections in a totalitarian regime.

Labour officials said that no decisions had been taken on whether Mr Brown would appear at the five hustings separately from deputy leadership candidates, since the number of candidates for both posts would not be known until nominations close.

Labour’s electoral college system means that some party members will have several votes, particularly MPs who belong to a trade union, a local Labour party and affiliated societies.

The winner must command a total of at least 50 per cent of the votes from three sections, comprising the 380 MP and MEPs, 200,000 party members and 3.2 million levy-paying members of affiliated trade unions or socialist societies.

If Mr Blair quits in the first week in May, under this process he would stand down as prime minister in late June, leaving his successor three or four weeks to make an impact before Parliament rises for the summer recess on July 26.

Unopposed

— 100% of electors voted for Kim Jong Il as a member of the Supreme People’s Assembly in 2003, according to North Korea’s central elections committee

— 100% of Iraqi voters were said to have voted yes in a referendum to give Saddam Hussein another seven years as president in 2002

— 83% were said to have reelected Aleksandr Lukashenko as president of Belarus last year despite complaints from observers

— 88.5% of Egyptians voted to give Hosni Mubarak a fifth term as president in Egypt’s first multi-candidate election in 2005

— President Suharto of Indonesia was reelected without opposition for a seventh term in 1998 but was toppled by riots months later

Source: Electoral Reform International Services

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