Gordon Brown was greeted by cheering Labour activists as he arrived at his hotel on the eve of the party's conference in Brighton.

Accompanied by wife Sarah - dressed in a simple black dress and cardigan - a beaming Mr Brown shook hands with his deputy, Harriet Harman, and Labour General Secretary Ray Collins.

The Prime Minister said nothing to reporters waiting in the warm September sunshine.

But John Prescott has said there is "something lacking" at the top of the Labour Party and accused Harriet Harman of concentrating too much on women's rights.

Ahead of the party’s annual conference, the former deputy Prime Minister accused the party's MPs of being "defeatist" and failing to take on the Tories or question David Cameron’s policies.

He also suggested that Tony Blair would not have allowed the Gurkha row to get out of control in the way Gordon Brown did earlier this year. He said: "There is no direction in campaigning - we are drifting.

"You ask yourself, why did we get in the Gurkhas situation? That would never have happened before," he said.

"So there's a feeling in the party that, somehow, we're not getting a grip on it. There is something lacking."

Mr Prescott criticised his successor Harriet Harman who, he added, should be “out and campaigning". She recently said that one of party’s two leading posts should always be held by a woman.

He also issued a thinly veiled criticism of Labour's election co-ordinator Douglas Alexander, the MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South. He said: "Those who have responsibility for campaigning - it is not reaching out to the depths of the party."

"We've got a whole bank of MPs, but everybody seems despondent. There's too much defeatist thinking. There's no central direction to campaigning."