Clarke: Blair wanted me to take on Brown
By politics.co.uk staff
Tony Blair tried to elevate Charles Clarke to foreign secretary in an effort to set him up as a challenger to Gordon Brown, according to Mr Clarke himself.
In a remarkably outspoken interview with the New Statesman, the former home secretary said:
“Tony told me the day after he sacked me that he [had] wanted to make me foreign secretary, and I was staggered … He had a great plan, apparently, that he wanted me to be foreign secretary because he thought that if I had been foreign secretary and home secretary I would be a credible opponent to Gordon as the leader of the party.
“And this had been his long-standing strategy, and that was what he had been intending to do, and that’s what he hoped to do … I knew nothing about this until after the event, and I said to him if he was nice enough to think I ought to be leader of the party, then he might as well have been courteous enough to tell me this was his plan.”
The comments will do nothing to improve Mr Clarke’s standing within the party. He cut an isolated figure during the Labour conference last year after speaking to the New Statesman about leadership challenges.
In a separate interview for the Telegraph, Mr Clarke said he would return to government if Mr Brown offered him a job.
That idea has been touted by a variety of political sources since the return of Peter Mandelson and Ken Clarke to their respective front bench teams seemed to signal a desire for ‘big beast’ figures.
But it would be politically difficult for the prime minister to bring Mr Clarke back on board after the statements he has made to the press.
“Of course if I could find a role in government I would be absolutely delighted to do it,” he said.
“I would enjoy doing it … Obviously the polls are not good at the moment and I want to be able to do all I can to maximise our performance.”
Mr Clarke did reserve some praise for the Gordon Brown.
“His great strength is in the economic field. I think he handled the situation extremely well in September and October; he was a figure of great authority at a time when the … economic world needed great authority,” he said.
“He was prepared to act and he deserves real credit for that … I think his position is strong.”
