Mutiny in the Cabinet; as Charles Clarke and Other Loyal Blairites React in Anger to Tony Blair's Euro Referendum, Just Who Is Running the Government?

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Byline: MARK SEDDON

THE Cabinet mutiny over Europe has set Blairites against Brownites, and more portentously, Blairites against Tony Blair. And it shows no signs of abating.

The rumbustious Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, is reported to have had a standup row with the Prime Minister during a recent Cabinet meeting.

His beef? Well, it came in two parts: there was Tony Blair's decision to bounce his Cabinet colleagues into accepting a referendum on the proposed Euro constitution, and then there was the role that the Chancellor and heir apparent, Gordon Brown had in persuading Blair to do so.

Clarke has been as ferociously loyal to Blair as he once was to Neil Kinnock, risking his job and possibly even his parliamentary seat to bulldoze through the university top-up fees that are so universally …