The prime minister should stand down and make way for Gordon Brown, a veteran Labour MP claims today.

Addressing a conference of politics students in London, Great Grimsby MP Austin Mitchell described Tony Blair as arrogant and attacked his "presidential" style of leadership.

"I think Gordon Brown's time has come," he argued.

"I'm not saying Blair must go because he has betrayed socialism. The Labour Party isn't actually a socialist party any more; it has diluted socialism," he said.

Nor should he quit for "betraying" Britain and "taking us into a war that was not justified" in Iraq, he added, but he should go due to the "very presidential system" of power in Downing Street.

"It is essentially a presidential system in which people don't elect a president in the way they do in the States," he argued.