Gordon Brown is head and shoulders above any potential rival for the Labour leadership and should be crowned without a contest, Alan Johnson told The Times in an interview.

The Education Secretary, who was once seen as a possible candidate, said that the only people really pushing for a contest were Labour’s opponents and the media.

He believes that some past contests have been bad for the party, notably the deputy leadership election of 1981, when Denis Healey narrowly beat Tony Benn, and says that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a “coronation”.

Mr Johnson’s unequivocal backing for the Chancellor underlines again how little support there is within the Cabinet for a heavyweight contest with Mr Brown.

Mr Johnson is standing for the deputy’s job but is reluctant to set out his stall yet. There are already many candidates in the field but, he said, it would be wrong to have a contest lasting some five or six months.

He gave two reasons why he did not end speculation in the summer about his running as a possible rival to Mr Brown.

He said that it seemed at one stage that there would be a contest involving several players and that it would have been wrong for him to have ruled himself out. Secondly, he had to pick his time to tell his constituency party which job he was going for.

Mr Johnson added: “A contest for the sake of it does not strike me as being sensible. Gordon is head and shoulders above anyone else in relation to his stature and qualifications for the job. Coronations can be the right thing.”

Some Labour figures worry that the Chancellor would be hampered by having to wait around while the party picks his deputy from a big field. But Mr Johnson said that Mr Brown could assume the leadership after the result of the deputy contest.

Mr Johnson is making plain that he will back the retention of Labour’s links with the unions, and that he will oppose an extension of state funding of political parties.

He thinks that Sir Hayden Phillips, who is conducting an independent review of party funding for the Government, will find a deal between the parties on the future of funding.

But he says that if Sir Hayden thinks that the problem is union contributions “he had better think again”.

“It is healthy for political parties to go out and raise funds. I don’t think the public should pay, and I do not want to weaken the bond that grassroots members have with their party,” he said.

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