The chancellor is "mesmerised" by the Bush administration and neo-conservative economics, according to Labour leadership contender John McDonnell.
Determined to overturn the "New Labour coup" he claims has overtaken the party, the backbench MP said the chancellor is responsible for the inexorable growth in the private sector's delivery of public services.
In an interview with the Parliamentary Monitor magazine, McDonnell said: "Gordon Brown and the leadership of the party seem mesmerised by the right-wing administration in Washington.
"In terms of foreign policy they look to George Bush, and in terms of domestic policy they look to the neo-conservatives.
"Gordon Brown's obsession with a flexible labour market and the expansion of the role of the private sector in public services is ideological, not pragmatic. I want to get back to this idea that what matters is what works: pragmatic, evidence-based policymaking.
"Brown is ideologically obsessed with the free market, and not what works in terms of delivering the best public services."
McDonnell believes that Brown was part of a small group which took over the party and moved it to the right after the death of John Smith.
"When we lost the election in 1992, John Smith took over, cleared Peter Mandelson out and went back to a broad-church approach. He appointed the shadow cabinet on a broad basis and even though he was traditional right-wing Labour, he was Labour," he said.
"When he died we were at our most vulnerable, having been out of power for 15-odd years; we had just lost our leader and that is when Mandelson, Tony Blair and the clique around them seized their moment. It was a coup, a very British coup."
McDonnell believes there is now an opportunity to seize back the leadership and make the party ‘real Labour’.
"Now the New Labour era is coming to an end, and with Blair announcing he is going we are winding that down. There is a bizarre disjuncture between what is happening within the parliamentary party and what is happening in the party nationally and our trade union affiliates at local level," he added.
"Within the Westminster elite it is all about fighting factions within New Labour. Brown's New Labour faction is fighting Blair's New Labour faction and Reid's New Labour faction – it is like The Sopranos."
