Brown goes public on NEC block
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has expressed his disappointment at having his membership request for a seat on Labour’s National Executive Committee turned down for a second time.
Gordon Brown said Tony Blair made the final decision to hand the job to someone else.
Instead, Mr Blair has opted for Hazel Blears and Douglas Alexander, Mr Brown’s understudy, with the third seat going to party chairman, Ian McCartney.
Mr Brown said he felt he was the right man to orchestrate the next general election campaign and would do a better job if he had a seat on the NEC.
The NEC is the body that organises election campaigning and manages internal operations.
Mr Brown said last night: “I chaired the Labour Party’s general election strategy committee and was responsible for the general election campaign and I thought that was a good relationship which involved that party as well as the people in Parliament.
“In 2001, I ran the election campaign but I wasn’t on the NEC. I thought the better relationship was to be on the NEC, but it is not a decision for me.”
Crucially, he added: “It’s a decision for Tony Blair and he has made his decisions.”
Critics say the exclusion is part of a Number Ten plan to diminish the Chancellor’s ‘power base.’
Lord Strathclyde, Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords, leaping on the opportunity to cleave a further wedge between Labour’s two most important players, said there was every sign that Mr Brown was plotting to unseat Mr Blair ahead of the next election.
But Peter Kilfoyle, former Labour defence spokesman dismissed the reports of a growing schism in the higher echelons of the party.
Peter Kilfoyle welcomed Mr Brown’s “candour and frankness,” adding this new approach was “refreshing.”
“I think the Kremlinesque approach of either no comment or dissembling when there is an obvious difference fools nobody. I think it is quite legitimate to have these differences.”
Mr Brown is also reportedly at odds with the premier over the European draft constitution and the increased role of the former Northern Ireland secretary Peter Mandelson in Downing Street.
The so-called “father of spin” recently rejoined Mr Blair’s press team after the resignation of Alastair Campbell.
But the Prime Minister’s official spokesman rejected reports of a rift as ‘blahtastic.’
