Brown told: you're still on course for top job (Blair out next term)

Blair will step down during next term, Chancellor assured

Gordon Brown is still on course to become Prime Minister after the next election, friends of Tony Blair said last night, as frantic efforts were under way to patch up a potentially explosive rift between the two men.

Allies of the Prime Minister signalled that, despite public protestations that he wants to go on and on, Blair is privately expected to step down some time during the next Parliament, leaving the door ajar for his Chancellor.

Last week's return of the arch-Blairite Alan Milburn - and the diminution of Brown's influence over the election campaign - once again brought the two camps dangerously close to all-out war, with claims that the Prime Minister had reneged on a pre-summer deal to quit.

Sources close to the two men this weekend confirmed that Brown did have a chance of taking over the leadership before the summer recess. One insider described Brown as a 'decent individual' who at the last minute had been unable to plunge the knife into his old friend: 'He was always very ambiguous about it... he's a very emotional guy, Gordon, and that makes it more difficult .'

more…
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,9061,1302818,00.html

:kick:

International intel says both Blair and Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf are history over their involvement, and committing their Country, in the U.S. - Iraq War. There goes our two largest alleys. Hell, England is the only other Country that presently has over 300 military people in Iraq as part of the U.S. Coalition of Fascist Losers!

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