Peter Hoskin

Did Blair want Charles Clarke to succeed him as Labour leader?

Ben Brogan picks up on an interview with Charles Clarke in tomorrow’s New Statesman in which the former Home Secretary claims Tony Blair wanted him to be Labour leader.  Here’ s the key passage from the interview:

“[Blair] 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.”

All immaterial now, I guess.  But an intriguing footnote to the Blair-Brown struggle nonetheless.

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