Blair taken to task over Brown comment
Conservative Party leader Michael Howard today went all-out on reports of divisions between the Chancellor and the Prime Minister.
Mr Howard asked Mr Blair how he responded to the comment – “There is nothing you could ever say to me now that I could ever believe” – ascribed to the Chancellor in a recent book.
Mr Blair robustly dismissed the comments, saying: “The claim in the book happens to be wrong.”
Rumours of the divisions between Mr Blair and Mr Brown flared up again last week after a bizarre timing clash where both men made major press appearances at the same time.
This week Labour MPs gave the two men a dressing-down over press briefings from unnamed ‘friends’ on the matter.
During Prime Minister’s Question Time, Mr Howard took Mr Blair to task over his oft-quoted ‘deal’ to hand over the leadership to Mr Brown, branding Mr Blair “the deals on meals Prime Minister”. It was “no wonder the Chancellor isn’t a happy eater”, he said.
The Prime Minister rebutted the questions, saying: “No-one does deals over a job like this.”
Mr Howard also referred to comments that “couldn’t be more damming” by Jonathan Baume, who represents the UK’s top civil servants, that the “conflicting and competing agendas” of Number 10 and the Treasury were “damaging” for the Government.
“How can they fight crime when they are fighting each other?”, he added.
This latter phrase is pictured alongide Tony Blair and Gordon Brown on a new poster launched by the Conservatives this afternoon.
Mr Blair responded to news of the poster campaign by saying: “He can stick up what ever he likes on billboards about something in a book,” but the public would concentrate on the ‘truth’ and their respective economic records.
There were a million more unemployed when the Tories were in office, which was “what they will be hearing from now until polling day”, he added.
