British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will announce an official inquiry report into the Iraq war “within days”.

Brown’s decision comes in the wake of the recent departure of the last British troops from Iraq.

The troops left their base outside Basra more than six years after the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein was toppled.

The announcement of the new probe is expected to be welcomed by many Labour MPs.

However, critics may see the inquiry as a sop to the party’s grassroots during its rough period.

Brown has asked Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell to draw up advice on the scope and timing of the inquiry, The Sun reports.

Sir Gus has also been asked to look at who would carry out the probe.

According to Downing Street sources, Brown had never been opposed to holding an inquiry in principle.

“It was always a question of when, not if. The PM’s view was that it would not be appropriate to have an inquiry when large numbers of our troops were still in Iraq,” an insider said.

Former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer has suggested British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to step down from leadership in a bid to reunite the Labour party.

“I think we are moving moderately quickly towards the need for a change and that change may be a change in leadership. We need unity above all. Can we get unity under the current leadership? I am not sure that we can,” The Telegraph quoted Lord Falconer, as saying.

Lord Falconer is the most senior figure so far to call for a leadership debate.

According to the Telegraph, a series of Cabinet Members allied to the former Prime Minister resigned as part of an organised plot to force out the Prime Minister.

The party may face another blow when the European election results are announced.

“The results are going to be terrible – there’’s no point beating about the bush on that – terrible for Labour,” Welsh Secretary Peter Hain said.

More than 250 Labour councillors will adjust to life out of office this week after the spectacular election defeat that left the party without control of a single county in England.

In Staffordshire, 29 of Labour’’s 32 councillors were struck out of office–a fitting end to one of the most chaotic election campaigns in memory, which saw all parties consumed by the row over MPs expenses and one local Labour MP calling for Gordon Brown’’s resignation even as the count was under way.

Sitting in the empty council chamber, the county’’s new Tory leader Philip Atkins illustrated the enormity of his party’’s victory.

“All that used to be Labour, all of that area,” he said, pointing at the benches. “They won”t even fill a single row from this week.”

The last time the Conservatives controlled Staffordshire was 28 years ago when Prince Charles was engaged to Lady Diana

Now, the scale of Labour’’s collapse was already apparent even before candidates arrived at the Knutton Recreation Centre on the bleak outskirts of Newcastle-under-Lyme to see the ballot boxes opened.

Actress Joanna Lumley has turned the screws on British Prime Minister Gordon Brown over the Gurkhas again with an extraordinary public intervention in politics that put the Government under ever greater pressure to improve the veterans” treatment.

A day after Brown personally intervened in the explosive row over the Gurkhas, Lumley maneuvered the Government into unprecedented public negotiations over the veterans” rights live on television.

The actress, who has been campaigning for more Nepalese veterans to be allowed to settle in Britain, sprang an ambush on Phil Woolas the immigration minister, in a Westminster television studio, The Telegraph reports.

Standing alongside the minister, Lumley declared that she and her campaigning allies would now help write new immigration rules for the Gurkhas.

The minister and the actress ended up shoulder-to-shoulder after Lumley signalled she was about to denounce the Government over its treatment of Gurkhas who had applied to settle in the UK.

She had called a press conference to highlight the apparent rejection of immigration applications by several Gurkha veterans, including two decorated veterans of the Falklands War.

When she arrived at the television studio, she encountered Woolas. The two held an impromptu private meeting, where the minister reassured Lumley that the rejected veterans” cases will automatically be reconsidered within weeks.

The row centres on immigration rules for Gurkhas who retired before 1997, which were put in place last month and which campaigners say would severely limit the number of veterans able to settle in the country they fought for.