UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has denied a new claim that he agreed to quit before the end of his second term to make way for Treasury chief Gordon Brown, but then decided to stay on.
"You don't do deals over jobs like this," Blair said on Sunday.
The feud between Brown and Blair is the most persistent rumor in British politics. But the latest twist came in a journalist's book alleging that Blair told his Chancellor of the Exchequer in late 2003 that he would quit before the next election, which is expected this year.
According to the book, Blair later reversed his position and decided to stay on, prompting Brown to tell him: "There is nothing that you could ever say to me now that I could ever believe."
Blair on Sunday played down the significance of the claims made in the book, Brown's Britain, by Robert Peston, a Sunday Telegraph journalist, who has known Brown and members of his inner circle for more than 10 years.
"This is reheated from six or seven months ago," Blair told BBC TV's Breakfast With Frost program. "I'm simply not going back over things that I've answered many, many times before."
Asked whether he had assured Brown that he would step down, then changed his mind, Blair replied: "I've dealt with this six months ago. I said then you don't do deals over jobs like this. You don't."
Brown later sidestepped questions about a rift and urged the government to unite to secure a third term.
"... I am not going to be diverted or distracted, nor is Tony Blair, by newspaper stories or books or rumors or gossip," he told reporters.
There has long been speculation that after Labour Party leader John Smith died in 1994, Brown agreed to withdraw from the leadership race in exchange for a promise that Blair, if elected, would step down midway through a second term.
Labour won a landslide victory in the 1997 election, and again in 2001. But Blair's popularity dipped sharply in 2003 because of the Iraq war, which Blair supported as a means of ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. Such weapons were never found.
Brown has been Treasury chief since 1997 and his successful handling of the economy is widely regarded as Labour's biggest election asset. He is sometimes criticized for lacking Blair's charisma but is popular with Labour traditionalists.
In an excerpt from his book published in the Sunday Telegraph, Peston wrote that on Nov. 6, 2003, at a dinner hosted by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, Blair told Brown he would quit.
"I think in the end I will be vindicated [over Iraq]. But I'm not going to turn this around for a very long time. Therefore I am going to stand down before the election," Blair said, according to Peston.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of