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Miliband could still succeed me: Blair

Ned Temko

`Heir apparent' Gordon Brown can be beaten, Prime Minister Tony Blair tells allies. Mr. Brown's aides hit back at attacks.

TONY BLAIR has told his closest political allies that if Environment Secretary David Miliband challenges Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership "he will win." The explosive revelations came during a series of interviews with those closest to the outgoing British Prime Minister. One of Mr. Blair's inner circle made it clear that the Prime Minister and his allies still think Mr. Brown can be beaten.

"I know what Tony thinks about this," one senior New Labour figure who has been close to the Prime Minister since the 1990s said in an interview. "He thinks that if David runs with conviction and mounts the right argument, he'll win. He'll win, because by the end of a leadership contest, the ground will move."

A Cabinet Minister confirmed that the Prime Minister had been discussing the possibility of a Miliband challenge with his closest allies. Mr. Blair's view, the Minister said, was that if Mr. Miliband was to win "he really has got to want it ... he really has to go for it."

The fact that the Prime Minister is talking so openly about a possible challenge to Mr. Brown will cause anger in the Treasury. Mr. Blair has never confirmed whom he will back in the leadership campaign when he resigns from the job of Prime Minister in the summer. A Downing Street official also confirmed that the Prime Minister had made clear his view that the success of a Miliband campaign depended on his taking a clear decision and mounting a strong campaign for the top job.

Although Mr. Miliband has always said he will not stand, one man who is thought to have the power to change his mind would be Mr. Blair. Mr. Miliband was the former Head of the Policy Unit at 10 Downing Street, working closely with Mr. Blair.

The comments risk destroying an increasingly fragile public truce between Mr. Blair and Mr. Brown. After the Budget received a lukewarm response from the public despite a headline cut in 2p in the rate of income tax, senior Blairites have decided to reveal in a series of briefings that there are growing signs of friction between Mr. Brown and Mr. Blair over future Labour policy. Mr. Brown was also described as "Stalinist" last week by the former Cabinet Secretary Sir Andrew Turnbull.

The Blair confidants claimed the Chancellor had initially refused to take part in last Monday's high-profile launch of the party's public service reform programme. Other sources said the Chancellor had made it clear he would not adopt the Government's recently announced proposals for a radical overhaul of the welfare system. A spokesman for the Chancellor said the charges were "absolutely untrue." He said that from the moment the policy launch was scheduled, "it was in the Chancellor's diary" and that Mr. Brown had also publicly welcomed the welfare proposals. The accusations were "deliberate mischief-making," the spokesman said, at a time when the party should be using its energies to unite against the Tories (Conservatives).

The Prime Minister's views on the succession race, which he has been careful not to comment on publicly, emerged in interviews with some of his closest aides. One of them, responding to suggestions that Mr. Brown's succession was simply a political "inevitability," said: "There's an inevitability only if David [Miliband] doesn't stand. All Blairite members of the Cabinet think of one thing, and that is: will David stand?"

He revealed that he had been asked last week by one Government Minister "What does Tony think?" about the succession issue.

The willingness of Mr. Blair's closest allies to reveal the Prime Minister's thinking will be seen as a sign they are increasingly anxious to stop a "bandwagon" effect from building behind the Chancellor. One senior Blairite confided that the decision by Labour's ruling executive last week to allow only 48 hours for candidates to declare that they want to fight for the leadership after Mr. Blair resigns had made it clear that "there will not be much time to build momentum behind an alternative."

They view Mr. Miliband as someone who will be closer to Mr. Blair's way of thinking. "The policy review [launched by the Prime Minister] is a process which Gordon has been extremely bad-tempered towards," said one senior Blairite. "Even last week, despite Tony's constant enjoining Gordon that he needs to position himself as a continuation of New Labour, as a further reformer, as a moderniser — as somebody who this forward policy review gives a perfect vehicle to position himself as the inheritor of, and the person who will take forward, the New Labour project — he said he was not going to take part in this launch."

"Why should I?" Mr. Brown was alleged to have argued. "It's not my policy, it's yours. Indeed, there's not a single policy in this I agree with apart from the enlarging of the roles of pharmacies."

It was not until Friday, a Downing Street source claimed, that Mr. Brown had finally agreed to attend, "when he realised we were not going to change our plans." — © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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