BRITAIN:Downing Street has denied any connection with an internal memo that apparently admits the British government is seen as a "shambles".
A report in the Mail on Sunday claimed that the document was prepared for Tony Blair by senior aides and gives a bleak assessment of Labour's situation.
It expresses concern that the party is viewed as riven by "internal conflicts" and lacking "grip and competence on vital issues".
The memo also apparently warns that the position of Mr Blair's likely successor, chancellor Gordon Brown, is "eroding" against David Cameron's "increasingly acceptable" Tories.
It suggests the party should be considering "moving to a new generation" of younger candidates in order to avoid electoral disaster, adding: "This really is s**t or bust time."
A spokesman for the prime minister said last night: "This is not a Downing Street memo, it was not written by any of the prime minister's staff and it most certainly does not reflect his views."
Downing Street sources also insisted the memo had not been prepared by any of Mr Blair's special advisers or other Labour Party-funded staff in his personal office.
Deputy prime minister John Prescott dismissed the text as "colourful reading", but conceded they could have come from a junior Labour Party source.
"It's been emphatically denied by Number 10 that it is anybody in Number 10," he told BBC1's Sunday AM.
However, he added: "I can't be sure that it might not be a teenybopper on the side giving some kind of information and advice."
He also expressed doubts over a bizarre remark reportedly made by Mr Blair, in which he supposedly criticised Mr Brown's policies for not "buttering parsnips".
"Listen, I've worked with these two guys - in quite intimate discussions, really - over the last 12 years," Mr Prescott said. "That is not the way they talk."
The memo, which the Mail on Sunday claims was written in the past few weeks, would appear to contradict Mr Blair's public attacks on Mr Cameron as a mere political lightweight who would be knocked out by the "big clunking fists" of the next Labour leader.
It expresses alarm that the Tories have large opinion poll leads on "tax, crime and immigration", while Labour no longer has a "measurable lead" on "any major issue".
It adds: "The government is seen as a shambles. It is not just Labour internal conflicts but a lack of grip and competence on key issues.
"Iraq is a potent and raw issue, so is the NHS, immigration and crime. We have lost control of the big issues and are not delivering."