Harman denies she wants PM job

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour Party deputy, Harriet Harman, denied suggestions on Monday that she wants to take his job.

Harman rejected reports in Monday's Telegraph newspaper that she would fight for the leadership of the Labour Party if Brown was forced from office by dissenters.

Asked if she would seek election to be Labour leader if a vacancy came up, Harman said: "No."

"I do not want to be Prime Minister, I do not want to be leader of the party," she told BBC radio. "I want Gordon Brown to remain PM after the next election as well as before the election."

Speculation about whether Brown can survive in his job was fuelled on Sunday after a senior minister in his government warned Labour was at risk of electoral disaster, saying it was guilty of a "lamentable failure" to connect with voters.

Local Government Secretary Hazel Blears, a usually loyal Cabinet member, echoed views of dissenting Labour politicians that the government needed a dramatic change of direction or it could be routed at the next election due by June 2010.

"Labour's standing has taken a titanic battering in recent weeks," Blears wrote in Sunday's Observer newspaper. "Labour ministers have a collective responsibility for the government's lamentable failure to get our message across."

Brown's woes have been growing this year, with Britain running up a record budget deficit, ministers facing embarrassment over parliamentary expenses and growing reports of unease in his party as electoral support ebbs away.

Brown is lagging as much as 18 points behind Conservatives in opinion polls, suggesting Labour is set to lose power at the next general election, due by mid-2010.