Gordon Brown is being urged by senior ministers to lay down the law in Downing Street to prevent staff tensions from affecting the smooth running of government and hampering a Labour recovery.

The Prime Minister is known to be dismayed by a spate of leaks suggesting rifts between his new team of strategy advisers under Stephen Carter and the political aides who have served him on his way to the top job.

Although the arrival of several senior figures might be expected to cause suspicion and caution in the existing structure, ministers believe that the problems have been worsened by the newcomers exaggerating their roles and appearing to be critical of the political operation. They also say, however, that the newcomers, although highly skilled in their own fields of public relations and strategy, lack the political nous to see problems before they pile up in front of them.

They cite Mr Brown’s delay in granting his MPs a free vote on key parts of the embryology Bill and say that someone in No 10 should have been telling him weeks ago that it was the easiest way out of a difficult corner. Among the older hands there was scarcely concealed irritation this week when a presentation by Mr Brown to the Cabinet on a battle plan for the months ahead was briefed to some newspapers, but not by Mr Brown’s official spokesmen, as if Mr Carter had delivered it.

Mr Brown’s chief of strategy and principal adviser, as Mr Carter is known, had drawn up the paper, which was under the theme “on your side” and “at your service” and delineated the dividing lines between Labour and the Tories. Mr Brown used it in his speech, but the briefing that it was by Mr Carter was seen as inappropriate by some in No 10. “Advisers should be heard privately but not seen. We don’t name the speechwriters after every prime minsiterial speech,” one source said.

Mr Brown is reported authoritatively to be pleased with the work that Mr Carter is doing but has been taken by surprise by the stir it has caused. His officials insist that, although there is annoyance about some recent newspaper stories, old and new staff are working well together.

The uncertainty over the No 10 operation has added to the sense of gloom among Labour MPs, which manifested itself starkly at a private meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party on Monday night. One minister present said that although there was no criticism of Mr Brown, the mood was the worst since he had become Prime Minister, with several MPs voicing worries about the impact of the decision in his last Budget to scrap the 10p starting rate of tax. Morale will be hit further if Labour does as badly as expected in the May local elections and the London mayoral election.

One minister said yesterday that only a figure such as Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, who is close to Mr Brown personally but worked on the inside at the Treasury for many years, could sort out the differences and get everyone “singing from the same sheet”. Others believe that Mr Brown will have to “lay down the law” and “knock heads together”. They expect him to do so.

The newcomers are being blamed privately for the briefings because news of recent reorganisations has appeared first in PR Week, the trade journal and effective house magazine for some of the appointees, such as Mr Carter, David Muir, an advertising executive, Nick Stace, communications chief at Which? magazine, and Jennifer Moses, formerly of Goldman Sachs.

Last week it disclosed that Mr Carter had contacted three of Tony Blair’s former speechwriters, Phil Collins, Peter Hyman and David Bradshaw, to see whether they wished to return.

Insiders said that the report was accurate, although the approaches happened some time ago. The Times was told that Mr Brown was placing ever more reliance for his speeches on Colin Currie, one of his closest old friends.

The report contained criticism of the Government’s “cluttered” messages, and Mr Brown’s lack of personality and “stilted language” and suggested that he was also reviewing the position of Deborah Mattinson, his long-serving pollster.

Ministers accused whoever briefed the magazine of gross naivety. “What is going on here? Do people think they can go running to a trade magazine and somehow not have their thoughts end up in the national press? It is crazy and destabilising,” one said.

Mr Carter is winning praise from Cabinet ministers for sharpening the Government’s strategy and for the energy of his approach but they say that Mr Brown has to get to grips with the cultural clash between the can-do vision of his new advisers from the business world and the need sometimes to take account of political realities.

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