TONY BLAIR’S attempt to maintain his grip on his party during the remaining months of his leadership took a blow yesterday as he faced the beginnings of a Cabinet revolt over replacing the Trident nuclear deterrent.

As the Prime Minister began his farewell week desperately trying to deflect questions about the leadership — and Gordon Brown prepared for what is billed as the biggest speech of his life to the party conference today — Mr Blair’s diminishing authority was shown as Peter Hain and Hilary Benn called for the debate to be opened up. Their intervention was significant as they coincided with moves by the leadership to prevent motions on Trident at this week’s conference in Manchester.

Mr Hain said that the party risked losing the support of progressive sections of society if it tried to impose a decision reached by a couple of Cabinet minsters behind closed doors and Mr Benn also backed calls for the debate. The International Development Secretary said: “I think there should be a debate, both in conference, in the party, in the country and in Parliament.” Mr Blair and Gordon Brown have indicated in recent months their belief in the need for a full replacement of Trident, even though it is opposed by large sections of the Labour Party.

Ministers say it is inevitable that Mr Blair will find it difficult to avoid challenge in his final months. Before last week’s Cabinet meeting several ministers advised him against going ahead with his plan to set up new policy groups. He agreed, but ministers said that such a move would have been unthinkable only a short time ago.

But Mr Blair received support from one of his staunchest allies last night when Peter Mandelson, the EU Trade Commissioner, made a stinging attack on those seeking to push the Prime Minister from office.

In a thinly veiled attack on Gordon Brown and his allies, he said: “I’m all for stable and orderly transitions ever since I entered Walworth Road (then Labour headquarters) in 1985. But what we’ve seen since our election night in 2005 when the party was barely over and the empties barely tidied away from the night before has been anything but stable and orderly,” he said at a Progress fringe meeting.

But despite Mr Blair’s determination to concentrate delegates’ minds on policy, the leadership question permeates every aspect of the conference. Through a television appearance here, a newspaper interview there, off-the record-briefings by officials and on-the-record statements by allies, Mr Brown has finally started revealing his vision for Britain.

After more than a decade pondering what he would do when he gets the keys to No 10, the Chancellor and his allies have embarked on a carefully co-ordinated campaign to sketch out Brown’s Britain.

Far from it being business as usual, he is making clear that it would be different from Blair’s Britain. “We have got to have new policies for new times and I think we’ll be able to show over the next few years that we can combine the experience that people can trust, with also the new and fresh ideas that are about the future,” he declared on the BBC Politics Show.

The offensive has been carefully designed to prove that he has new ideas and is not part of a tired government, and to woo support. But Mr Blair declined to back Mr Brown.

In his final pre-conference television interview, the Prime Minister urged his party to focus on the big issues and said it had gone “Awol from the British public” in the tussle over his future. Time and again he declined invitations to endorse Mr Brown and said that the Cabinet had agreed to concentrate on the future and not speculation. Mr Blair told Sunday AM on BBC One: “What I want to do this week is say to the party, ‘We have had a difficult time recently. Go back, focus on the public, the public’s concerns and things that really worry people.”

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