Blunkett says Labour will rally round Brown
Former cabinet minister David Blunkett has claimed that Labour MPs will support Gordon Brown if and when he becomes leader of the party.
But he refused to give his own personal backing to the chancellor as prime minister, claiming that he no longer had the “clout to make a difference”.
Although Mr Blunkett recognised the divisions that exist in the government, he told BBC1’s Sunday AM that a successful Labour party under Mr Brown would mean MPs “working under Gordon vigorously”.
The former home secretary has been back in the public eye since excerpts from his forthcoming memoirs were serialised the newspapers.
But today he said that the contents of the book would not be the “least bit damaging to the long-term of the party or the government”.
One of Mr Blunkett’s claims is that the chancellor privately had reservations over the Iraq war, amid fears that Britain was too closely aligning its foreign policy with that of the US.
The MP wrote that Tony Blair told Mr Brown he would “take him out” unless he gave his “unequivocal” backing to the war, and although Mr Blunkett, in his BBC interview today, admitted to using this turn of words, he said he would not use it again.
When quizzed as to whether he was exploiting his position in profiting from his time in the cabinet, the former minister said the book contained no “tittle-tattle”, just “open [and] logical” content.
Mr Blunkett said the book merely “sheds some light in terms of how we deal with [the ups and downs of government], and people come out with enormous credit”.
