Peter Mandelson, Britain’s European Commissioner, challenged Gordon Brown last night to set out his vision for Britain, saying that he needed to provide a clearer sense of direction.

Mr Mandelson, whose relations with Mr Brown have been notoriously bad for more than a decade, also appeared to fire a warning shot by telling the Prime Minister not to distance himself from the Blair era.

“I think what the Government has, certainly in relation to Europe but in other areas, is a very solid basis, a policy platform on which to go forward to build on what the new Labour Government has done over the last ten years,” Mr Mandelson told Channel 4 News.

“What I think is important for the Government is to set out clearly both within its own ranks and then for the public where it wants to take these different bits of its policy agenda.”

His remarks implied that neither the Labour Party nor the country was yet clear what Mr Brown stood for.

Mr Mandelson added: “I like to see the new Labour project evolving into something. I like to see the new Prime Minister taking over seamlessly from the previous one. And I like seeing very much, I must say, a new generation of Cabinet members, as it were, taking on the baton from the previous generation.”

Mr Mandelson called it extraordinary that the “Brown-led new Labour government” was able to refresh itself in the way it had. But his intervention is likely to irritate Mr Brown as he takes part in his first European summit in Lisbon, facing demands for a referendum on the EU’s reform treaty.

Times Recommends

• The bright side of this winter rain
• Story behind the picture: Snow Leopard, 2008
• Times Charity Appeal: The Place2Be