British Finance Minister Gordon Brown showered Tony Blair with praise on Monday, seeking to dispel doubts of a rift between the two as he staked his claim to succeed the prime minister.
In a make-or-break speech to the Labour Party annual conference, Brown said it had been a ”privilege” to work alongside Blair, whom he called ”the most successful ever Labour leader and Labour prime minister”.
He added: ”Whether it is building social justice at home, the advances of peace in Northern Ireland, resolution in the face of terrorism and leadership on Africa, let us today [Monday] applaud the immense national and international contribution as leader and prime minister of Tony Blair.”
There has long been speculation about the pair’s relationship, with the chancellor of the exchequer said to be unhappy with Blair’s apparent refusal to hold good to a promise to hand over power to him sooner.
That culminated in a very public spat earlier this month in which Brown loyalists within Labour’s parliamentary ranks forced Blair to say he would leave office within 12 months, allegedly with the chancellor’s blessing.
Brown, who has known and worked with Blair for the last 23 years, accepted that differences were ”hardly surprising”, expressing ”regret” where their individual problems had distracted from the task in hand.
But he paid tribute to Blair’s vision in turning round the Labour Party and in his sometimes controversial approach to global terrorism after the September 11 2001 attacks in the United States.
”You saw it right, you saw it clearly and you saw it through; that the world did change after September 11,” he told the 12 000 delegates in Manchester, north-west England.
”No one can be neutral in the fight against terrorism and that we — Britain — have new international responsibilities to discharge.”
Setting out a vision of any future leadership under his control, he vowed to continue the work of Blair over the last nine years.
”The renewal of New Labour will be founded on that essential truth — the need for global cooperation in the fight against terrorism, never anti-Americanism, recognising that the values of decent people everywhere are for liberty, democracy and justice, not just for ourselves but for everyone, not least for the poorest countries and peoples of the world,” he added. — AFP
