Sex Scandal Rocks Blair Gov't

British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government, hit by a string of resignations and scandals, was urged on Monday to stop squabbling and put its troubles behind it.

"It is important that the government not only works as a team but is seen to work as a team," said Jack Cunningham, the "cabinet enforcer" whose job is to ensure discipline and implementation of government policy.

Two ministers have resigned, a leading ministerial press aide is to step down and Foreign Secretary Robin Cook's ex-wife has accused him of being a drunk and a serial adulterer.

It was the worst three weeks suffered by Blair's Labour government since it swept to power with a landslide election victory in May 1997.

Cunningham conceded that "the difficulties of the last few weeks have done some damage to the government and its standing and reputation and it would be quite remarkable if it had not done so."

With government ministers now leading the fightback with a series of carefully orchestrated policy speeches over the next week, Cunningham said: "We must put these things behind us."

Blair returned from his winter holiday in the Seychelles and went straight on the offensive, giving his wholehearted backing to Cook and urging voters to judge his government on its policies and not on "scandal, gossip and trivia."

Weekend newspaper headlines were dominated by a searing memoir by Margaret Cook who said her ex-husband Robin was a drunk who had six affairs during their 28-year-marriage.

The Sun, Britain's best-selling tabloid, even launched a front-page telephone poll on Monday asking its readers to vote on the question "Would You Sleep With This Man?" and describing the red-bearded minister as a garden gnome and Popeye lookalike.

Blair said British politics was in danger of being turned into little more than a Hollywoood-style gossip column if ministers' private lives were kept under the media microscope.

"We can either go through the personal lives of all cabinet ministers and pick them apart or we can decide that the government should be judged on the promises that it made," he told BBC Television on Sunday.

Blair paid a warm tribute to his Trade Secretary and close personal ally Peter Mandelson, who had to resign over a secret home loan, and sought to quash persistent speculation of a rift with his finance minister Gordon Brown.

When parliament resumes later on Monday, Blair faces a grilling over the fall of Mandelson, his closest political friend, and Paymaster-General Geoffrey Robinson, the wealthy Labour businessman whose secret loan to Mandelson to help him buy a house torpedoed both their careers.

Blair also delivered a fulsome tribute to his finance minister after Brown's close adviser and press spokesman Charlie Whelan, accused of undermining Mandelson by leaks to the press, resigned.

Brown has in turn insistethat this was a government of substance, not style.

"New Labour has an opportunity to break free of the bland, 18-month stereotyping of our government by our adversaries as simply presentation and style," he wrote in Sunday's Observer newspaper.

But Conservative foreign affairs spokesman Michael Howard was predictably scornful, saying: "This government is in a dreadful mess."