Blair will quit ‘well before’ next election
Tony Blair will step down as prime minister “well before” the next general election, one of his cabinet colleagues has said.
Jack Straw, the leader of the House of Commons, gave the clearest indication yet that the prime minister would not be sticking to his original pledge to serve a full third term.
Mr Blair privately told Labour MPs last month that he would leave his successor “ample” time to settle in before a next election, although he has insisted that to give any formal timetable for a handover of power would “paralyse” the government.
“Everybody knows that Tony will go, go well before the next election; that unless something astonishing happens, that I’m not anticipating, that Gordon [Brown] is his successor,” Mr Straw told The Spectator.
The former foreign secretary also confirmed that he would be interested in taking over from John Prescott as deputy leader of the Labour party, saying he had authorised his aides to put his name forward as a possible successor.
Education secretary Alan Johnson last week said he was “interested” in the job, but only when Mr Prescott resigned, while constitutional affairs minister Harriet Harman and Northern Ireland secretary Peter Hain are other possible candidates.
“Look, what’s been said on my behalf has been said, and everyone faces a dilemma between dissembling and fuelling a fire,” Mr Straw said.
“People have been reasonably candid on my behalf. It was precisely because I didn’t want to dissemble that the message was put out on my behalf on Friday and Saturday.”
However, he insisted there should be no jostling for position for Labour party leader – any challenge to the chancellor would be “bloody debilitating”.
“I think there’ll be one candidate, and I think that’ll be a great relief to people. If there is one obvious candidate, why on earth spend so much time and money in the party having an unnecessary contest?” he said.
“[It] was put forward during the dog days of Labour opposition that elections were cleansing. On the whole they were absolutely bloody debilitating.”
He added that Mr Brown “deserves” the job, saying; “That’s why there’d be great consensus around him.”
Mr Straw’s comments are unlikely to be welcomed by Downing Street, which has managed to keep questions about Mr Blair’s future – and that of his deputy – off the agenda for the past week.
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