British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's latest eye problems are not a reason for him to quit before a national election due by next June, both supporters and opponents said on Sunday, reported reuters. Brown's office said on Saturday that the prime minister -- who is blind in one eye after a teenage rugby injury -- would not undergo surgery despite suffering two tears to the retina in his other eye, where he already has some vision problems. The news came two weeks after an interviewer asked Brown whether he was on medication to help cope with his job, which prompted Brown to talk about his well documented eyesight problems. Liam Fox, defence spokesman for the opposition Conservatives and a former medical doctor, played down concerns about Brown's health. "There are lots of reasons to think that Gordon Brown should not be prime minister ... but not picking on his eye sight," Fox told broadcaster Sky News. "To focus on this and to say that that would make him unfit to be prime minister is not the sort of politics we should indulge in," Fox added. Unlike U.S. presidents, British prime ministers do not make their medical records public. There has been speculation that Brown could resign on health grounds before the next election, enabling a new Labour leader to attempt to eat into the hefty opinion poll deficit that the party suffers versus the opposition Conservatives. But Home Secretary (interior minister) Alan Johnson -- who has been tipped as a potential successor to Brown -- said there was no chance the prime minister would resign. "There is no possibility whatsoever. He will fight the next election," he told BBC interviewer Andrew Marr, who had previously asked Brown directly about his health. "He is fit and well and able and determined and energetic." Support for the centre-right Conservatives stands at 45 percent, 19 points ahead of Labour, and enough to give them a strong majority in parliament in the election, a poll published on Sunday showed.
