Gordon Brown only offered unequivocal public support for the Iraq War after deciding that Tony Blair would sack him as Chancellor if he did not, former Cabinet minister David Blunkett has claimed.
In the latest instalment of his diaries, published in The Guardian, Mr Blunkett said that Mr Brown "decided he was coming on board" over the war just five days before the House of Commons voted for military action.
Mr Blunkett recalled tense discussions in the Cabinet in the run-up to war, and stated that ministers' questions over the post-war reconstruction of Iraq were "never satisfactorily resolved".
After the Government won the Commons vote on war on March 18th, 2003, Mr Blunkett noted that the Chancellor had put his weight behind Mr Blair, and speculated that this was because he feared the sack if he did not.
"Gordon has made a real effort to bat in this week and I think there's been a realisation by him that Tony isn't going and that he's got a choice," Mr Blunkett said in a diary tape dictated at the time of the vote.
Earlier, Mr Brown dismissed reports that Mr Blunkett had accused him of offering public support for the war only at the last minute.
"I don't think David Blunkett has ever said such a thing. If he is reported as saying that, he has been entirely misquoted," said the Chancellor.
Despite telling his diary on the eve of war that it was "important to be very supportive of Tony at Cabinet", Mr Blunkett made clear that there were times when the two clashed.
On one occasion shortly after the outbreak of hostilities, he warned that the Allied forces were fighting with a "medieval strategy" of laying siege to towns.
In a note added recently, Mr Blunkett said: "It is worth reflecting that throughout this period, there were some of us who were raising, both in the War Cabinet and privately, the questions that I think Tony was raising personally with George Bush but which were never satisfactorily answered."