Popular with his party but less so with the country, Gordon Brown might not win an election as prime minister, a key former adviser to President Clinton has said.

Dick Morris told ePolitix.com that the chancellor could be the man the Labour Party turn to when Tony Blair stands down as prime minister.

But while he will appeal to the party's grassroots, he could fail to triumph at the polls because of his politics, the American elections expert predicts.

Morris believes that Howard Dean will secure the Democratic presidential nomination next year but suffer in a one-on-one contest with George W Bush.

In an exclusive interview with this website, the man who masterminded Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign also said that while Brown may fill the Dean role, Michael Howard is "not the British Bush".

Now advising the UK Independence Party, Morris argued that "Bush clearly stands for things".

"He has clear and aggressive views on important issues," he told ePolitix.com.

"Howard straddles the European issue and won't come out for a tax cut and has all kinds of ifs and buts in his position.

"He more represents Bob Dole, the consensus leader that doesn't articulate strong policies and fails.

"Gordon Brown may well be the British Howard Dean... [he] certainly begins to fit that bill."

Morris also claimed that the Tories need to ditch their pro-European wing in order to return to power.

"The Conservative Party needs to become smaller before it can become bigger," he said.

And he argued that the proposed European Union constitution will erode the special relationship between Britain and the United States.

"I think anybody who even glances at a map of the world would see that the English channel is wider than the Atlantic ocean," he said.

"The Atlantic ocean has narrowed and the English channel has widened."

He went on to raise the prospect of Hilary Clinton running for vice-president alongside Dean in next year's presidential race and hailed the emergence of the "internet age" of American politics.

"The Dean candidacy for all of the difficulty that it is going to have in elections against Bush, his ability to come from nowhere and get the Democratic nomination, to vault ahead of five other candidates who are ahead of him is extraordinary and is almost entirely due to the internet," Morris said.

"I think it is the beginning of the internet age in American politics and the end of the media age.

"His contribution to the reform of American politics gives him a place in history.

"He literally has broken the cycle of bribery through campaign contributions that has come to typify both political parties."