Labour’s beleaguered Scottish leader has backed away from her proposal for an early referendum on Scottish independence.

Wendy Alexander claimed to have called the bluff of the Scottish National Party, which has stuck to its timetable for a 2010 referendum.

“Were the SNP willing to put their money where their mouth is and let the people speak? They were not,” she said. “The SNP party colour is yellow and we now know why.”

Prime Minister Gordon Brown publicly backed her. A Downing St aide described her as a “first rate” leader of Labour in Scotland, and added: “Gordon and Wendy will lead the defence of the Union and Scotland’s place in it.”

But her political rivals in the SNP and the Conservatives ridiculed Ms Alexander’s statement as a “humiliating climbdown” in which she had “taken the public for fools”.

Ms Alexander last week called on the SNP to bring forward its plans for a referendum, to test the Scottish public’s appetite for independence.

If the SNP would not introduce a bill for an early referendum, Labour would do so, she said. “Bring it on,” she told Alex Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister and SNP leader.

But Gordon Brown conspicuously failed to give public support to her call when questioned in the Commons.

Today, Ms Alexander said Labour, as a minority in the Scottish Parliament, could not force an early referendum.

She argued that her party had called the SNP’s bluff: “The SNP can never again claim that a Unionist cabal is denying Scotland a voice,” she said.

“Alex Salmond’s supposed timetable for a referendum in late 2010 merely serves his own narrow political and electoral interests, rather than the interests of the Scottish people.”

But the SNP and the Conservatives were scornful.

Nicola Sturgeon, SNP deputy leader, said: “Words like laughing stock do not even begin to reach the extent of the Labour Party’s disarray and humiliation.

“The abject humiliation of this climbdown statement leaves Wendy Alexander without a thread of credibility and her position as Labour leader now looks impossible.”

Annabel Goldie, the Scottish Tory leader, said Ms Alexander was trying to “defend the indefensible” by rewriting history and taking the public for fools.

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