Short says Blair offered to go if Brown backed euro

A British former cabinet minister said Tony Blair offered to stand down as prime minister before the next election if finance minister Gordon Brown backed his plans to join the euro.

Clare Short, a close ally of Chancellor of the Exchequer Brown, said in comments published on Friday that she was twice used as a go-between by Mr Blair over the proposal, which would see him leave in return for Mr Brown's euro support.

But she said Mr Brown bluntly rejected the idea, refusing to put his personal ambition before Britain's national economic interests and insisting the country was not ready to join the euro.

Ms Short's declarations in the Independent newspaper were the latest twist in the tortuous tale of who will succeed the prime minister, who said before surgery for heart palpitations early this month he wanted to run for a third term but not a fourth.

Rumours have swirled for years that Mr Blair, who led the Labour Party out of almost 20 years in the political wilderness to two landslide election triumphs, had struck a deal in 1994 that he would one day stand aside for Mr Brown.

Ms Short, who resigned from the cabinet in protest at the war in Iraq, has offered a look at the tensions inside Mr Blair's government in a new book, An Honourable Deception?, serialised in London's Independent newspaper.

The former international development minister said Mr Blair told her on a trip to Africa in 2002 he really did not want a third term, but "wished Gordon would work more closely with him so that he could make progress on the euro and if he did, he would be happy to hand over to Gordon".

"He made it quite clear that he wanted me to tell Gordon what he said," Ms Short wrote.

At a second meeting, in September last year, she said Mr Blair told her Britain must join the euro before the next election, which is now widely expected to be held in May.

Mr Brown rejected the suggestion, saying Britain was not ready for the European single currency.

Mr Blair's office declined all comment, but Ms Short's revelations are sure to fuel speculation about a Blair-Brown rift at the heart of the government.

Ms Short said Mr Brown, widely regarded as one of Britain's most successful chancellors of the exchequer, feared he would lose his job after the war in Iraq.

"He felt very much under pressure and believed they wanted him to move him from being chancellor," Ms Short wrote.

"TB (Tony Blair) doesn't listen to him anymore and was listening only to non-Labour voices and thinking about his reputation in history," she added.

If Mr Blair wins the next election - as opinion polls suggest - he will become the only Labour Party leader to win three straight terms and could even last longer than "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher's 11 years in office.

But Mr Blair, whose trust ratings plunged after he took a reluctant Britain to war in Iraq, could find his dreams in tatters over Europe.

He has announced his intention to offer Britons a referendum on a new European Union constitution, probably in 2006.

Mr Blair has long said he wants to put Britain at the heart of Europe, but polls suggest it will be an uphill climb convincing his eurosceptic compatriots to back him in the referendum.