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Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling have the same view of the U.K. economy, and the Labour party's leadership is secure, U.K. Justice Secretary Jack Straw said today.

Straw spoke on the British Broadcasting Corp.'s Andrew Marr Show a day after Darling said in a Guardian newspaper interview that the U.K. is facing “arguably the worst'' economic crisis for the last 60 years. He later changed his assertion to say he was referring to global conditions.

Brown is preparing to announce measures to shore up the economy next month and bolster dwindling voter support for the ruling Labour party. The economy may tip into a recession after growth stagnated in the second quarter and ended the U.K.'s longest stretch of expansion in more than a century.

“The message from the government, from Gordon and Alistair, has been the same,'' Straw said. “There won't be a leadership challenge.''

The opposition Conservative Party's lead over Labour widened to 22 points from 8 points at the beginning of the year in a YouGov Plc poll finished on Aug. 21.

U.K. house prices declined the most in almost two decades in August as banks curtailed mortgage lending, Nationwide Building Society said. Unemployment may rise to around 2 million by the end of the year, said Bank of England policy maker David Blanchflower Aug. 28.

The central bank probably will leave the key interest rate at 5 percent at its meeting this week as they battle inflation that's more than double their 2 percent target. The consumer price index climbed to 4.4 percent in July as oil and food prices soared.

Rift Grown

A rift has grown between Darling and Brown over the prime minister's insistence that the Treasury fund a plan for the government to underwrite mortgages to help homeowners avoid default, according to the Mail on Sunday bad credit payday loan. The Treasury opposes the plan, which could cost up to 40 billion pounds ($73 billion), the paper said today.

The Independent on Sunday said today Stephen Carter, a strategist for Brown, plans to shift to a “lower-key'' role. The change comes after Brown had to quash speculation of a bid for his job following a call by Foreign Secretary David Miliband's “for real change'' in the government.

“It reveals simultaneously that the prime minister has lost authority over his cabinet, the chancellor has lost confidence over his own economic policies and the rest of the cabinet has lost confidence in the government,'' Willem Hague, a Conservative member of parliament who speaks on foreign policy, said on Sky News today.

Darling Comments

Darling added to his comments in the Guardian newspaper in a television interview yesterday.

“What is happening to every country in the world, ours included, is that we have a credit crunch the like of which we have not seen for generations,'' Darling told the BBC News. “We have that at the same time as oil and food prices are going up. But I also am clear that the fundamentals of our economy are strong.''

Straw today rejected the idea that a Conservative government could do a better job than the current Labour leadership.

“We've had a good period of economic management which has for sure provided us with a serious platform to weather these storms,'' he said. “We face turbulence, and the question for the country is, who is better to take us through this turbulent period, is it an experienced pilot and co-pilot, Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, or David Cameron and George Osbourne, who have no experience flying a large plane whatever.''

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