BRITAIN: Continuing tensions between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have again been laid bare as former ministers Charles Clarke and Alan Milburn launched a Labour "post-Blair" policy debate while denying an attempt to derail Mr Brown's leadership bid.
As environment secretary David Miliband again appeared to rule himself out of the running, Mr Clarke insisted: "It is not about causing trouble for anybody, it is not about building up a putative candidature for somebody. It is not an intervention in the leadership process."
However, while he and Mr Milburn said they still expected the chancellor to be the next Labour leader, they declined to formally endorse him or to rule out standing themselves.
In the Commons, meanwhile, outgoing prime minister Tony Blair yesterday vigorously defended Mr Brown's economic record, while again conspicuously failing to confirm him as his preferred successor.
Conservative leader David Cameron taunted Mr Blair, asking if he had attended the launch of the Clarke-Milburn 2020 Vision website, while wondering why so many Labour MPs thought Mr Brown would be "terrible" as prime minister yet were not prepared to stop him.
Mr Blair said he was "delighted that a full policy debate is happening within the Labour Party", adding that this would ensure Labour and not the Conservatives won the next election.
However, a third former Blairite minister, Stephen Byers, admitted he was "going round in a circle" while insisting Labour's policy debate should come ahead of the leadership contest expected in the summer.
At the same time Mr Byers came closer than Mr Clarke and Mr Milburn to urging an alternative candidate into the race, telling the BBC's Daily Politics programme: "The Labour Party is not the royal family, it does not go in for coronations and I hope there will be a serious contest."
With doubt and confusion characterising the response of many Labour MPs to yesterday's initiative, senior backbencher Tony Wright voiced the obvious challenge to Mr Clarke and Mr Milburn, saying: "If people think we need a contest they should put their names in the ring . . . they have it in their power to have one."
While agreeing it was "not necessarily healthy" to have a no- contest succession, Northern Ireland and Welsh Secretary Peter Hain, who is running for the deputy leadership of Labour, said Mr Brown was "the commanding figure" and again suggested it would be difficult for any alternative candidate to obtain the necessary backing of 44 MPs to get their name on the ballot paper.
Mr Hain, who has already made numerous wide-ranging speeches as part of his bid to succeed John Prescott, said he could also welcome the proposed widening of the Labour debate provided it was not "an attempt to paint Gordon" into an 'old' Labour box. Mr Brown, he said, had been "as much an architect" of Labour's three election successes as Mr Blair.
Mr Byers implied that the party's internal debate could yet yield substantial differences about future policy, saying that while the "general direction of travel" might be agreed, this did not necessarily extend to the "pace and mode of transport" or even, perhaps, to "the ultimate destination."
Former Europe minister Denis MacShane said Labour was drowning in ideas and debate, when it needed to show renewed confidence in itself as a party of government, capable of renewing itself in office.
Mr Clarke and Mr Milburn admitted yesterday that Mr Brown, while positive about the proposed debate, had expressed some "concerns" about their initiative in terms of timing, proximity to the May elections and the media climate.
As Labour's policy debate raged, meanwhile, an official review has told the government that inequality remains at "intolerable levels" in parts of British society and that a new impetus was required to break down "entrenched" inequalities.