BRITAIN:David Cameron has accused Gordon Brown of failing to behave in "an acceptable way for a prime minister" in his handling of statements about British troop withdrawal from Iraq.
Their sharp exchange in the House of Commons yesterday underlined the sense of changed "terms of trade" at Westminster following Mr Brown's general election U-turn.
It followed a Downing Street press conference at which Mr Brown maintained his "first instinct" had always been to take more time to set out his "vision" for Britain, as it had always been his intention to announce his decision at the end of the party conference season.
Accepting "full responsibility" for all the "snap election" speculation, Mr Brown denied he had been scared-off by a News of the World poll giving the Conservatives a six point lead in key marginal constituencies.
Mr Brown even suggested he would have resisted an election had the same poll pointed to a 100-seat majority for Labour.
"I'd have made the same decision," he claimed, telling reporters: "My instinct was that we should continue to govern and do right by the British people." Mr Brown admitted he had considered holding a November election, quoting Labour MPs in marginal seats in favour of going early and repeating his belief that he would have won an early contest.
"If there was an election now, I believe with the exposure of the issues we would have won," Mr Brown said.
However, he had had "to take a bigger view of the situation" and had reverted to that first instinct telling him "it is not enough to express a vision, we have to show we are delivering on it."
The Conservative leader returned to the attack yesterday, issuing a sharp rebuke to Mr Brown at the conclusion of his response to Mr Brown's Commons statement confirming that the next phase of Britain's planned handover to Iraqi forces in Basra province will see the total number of UK personnel in the country reduced to 2,500 by next spring.
Mr Brown assured MPs that all decisions were taken on the advice of military commanders on the ground, that remaining numbers would be sufficient to provide "force protection" for those remaining, and that he would not be bounced into setting an "artificial" deadline for withdrawal.
However Mr Cameron challenged Mr Brown to accept that the way in which he had made the statement about troop withdrawals from Iraq last week, and the way in which it was briefed to the press, had been mistakes.
"He promised to make such announcements to the House of Commons, but he didn't," charged Mr Cameron.
"He promised a thousand of our troops would be brought back before Christmas."
He added: "Yet isn't it the case that 500 of them had already been announced, and 270 were already in the country?"
Mr Cameron added: "I have to say to the prime minister: this is of a different order of magnitude to what we've heard from him over the last decade. This isn't just double counting of government spending. This is not about spinning the good bits of a budget and burying all the bad news in a footnote.
"This is about dealing with people's lives and the families of our brave servicemen.
"Does he agree this is just not an acceptable way for a prime minister to behave?"
An angry Mr Brown retorted that he had "no apologies" to make for visiting troops and meeting their commanders and the Iraqi government before making his detailed statement to MPs.
"This was not the announcement I made in Iraq last week," he said.
"The announcement I made was what would happen in the next few weeks. This is the long-term strategy... which means the numbers of our troops fall from 5,500 to 2,500 The criticism of me would have been if I had come to the House without visiting our troops in Iraq."
Mr Brown said he was able to announce the reductions because some 35,000 Iraqi personnel would be able to assume security responsibility themselves. He also confirmed that interpreters and other civilian staff who had worked for the British authorities for more than a year would be given assistance to re-locate in Iraq or elsewhere including in certain circumstances in the UK.