Gordon Brown rebuked his deputy leader yesterday when he warned ministers publicly to stick to policy and not court popularity by appealing to leftwingers in the party.

Drawing a line under the election for deputy leader, during which Harriet Harman, expressed regret at voting for the Iraq war, Mr Brown made clear that he would not tolerate breaches in discipline on policy.

“Harriet Harman and everybody who has joined the Cabinet accepts that they will speak to the policy of the Government,” Mr Brown said.

His comments, in response to a question about a call by Ms Harman during her campaign for Guantanamo Bay to be closed, provided another insight into Mr Brown’s relationship with his deputy, who was not given a Whitehall ministry but marginalised with the posts of party chairman and Leader of the Commons.

But his warning applied to other candidates for deputy leader, such as Peter Hain, who called for a debate on higher taxes for the rich, as well as to ministerial figures from outside the Labour Party, such as Sir Digby Jones, the former chief of the CBI, who has been appointed a trade minister.

“All the different ministers, they’re accepting the responsibility which is the collective responsibility of being part of a Government,” Mr Brown told Sunday AM on BBC One.

Plans for Mr Brown to make a statement to the Commons today on his planned constitutional reforms have been put back because of the terrorist incidents.

Times Recommends

• Wartime couple are reunited 68 years on
• 50 People of the Decade
• Book round-ups. Turkeys tarted up. I feel sick