David Miliband suggested yesterday that a Gordon Brown premiership could not be a rerun of the Blair era and that Blairite ministers would not be passive bystanders in his Cabinet.

The Environment Secretary, who finally confirmed at the weekend expectations that he would not be a runner, insisted that he had never been close to challenging Mr Brown.

That may well be the case, but it is known that he was subjected to lengthy pressure from friends and leading Blairite figures to be their standard-bearer against Mr Brown. His decision makes a coronation more likely but it is by no means certain because the Left is claiming that it will be able to reach the magic 44 MP threshold if John McDonnell and Michael Meacher combine forces under one of them.

Mr Miliband told the BBC: “I have said for three years that Gordon is the best qualified candidate and I meant it.”

Asked if it would be possible for Mr Brown to change while in office, he replied: “I am sure it is. We all change as we learn.” There would, however, have to be a bigger and deeper rethink about politics than ever before. “We need to build on what we’ve done, but clearly postBlair politics cannot be a rerun of 1997-2007,” he said.

“The striking thing about Gordon is the way he has a voracious appetite for ideas; the way he has genuinely deep values that he tries to apply to new circumstances,” Mr Miliband said. “He is the leader; we are not passive bystanders. We have got to be putting our energies and ideas, yes, into governing the country well, because if we do not govern the country well in the next two years then we will not deserve to win the next election.

“But we have also got to come forward in two years’ time, or whenever the election is, with a bold and clear programme for how we meet the problems of 2017.” The party was “more intellectually and ideologically confident than it has been at any time in the last ten years”, he said.

Candidacies from John Reid, the Home Secretary, and Charles Clarke, his predecessor, have not been ruled out and MPs report being asked if they would support them. But Mr Brown looks unstoppable and some bookmakers have stopped taking bets.

Mr Meacher, meanwhile, has fiercely contested claims that he has only three MPs backing him. His campaign team pointed out that on the basis of his own signed nomination forms, Mr Meacher already has 24 MPs backing him and believes that a further 12 are highly likely to support him. His friends claim that the figures suggesting that he has few backers have been put around by the Brown camp because the Chancellor would prefer to stand against Mr McDonnell.

Mr Meacher said last night: “By playing down my support so absurdly and by exaggerating McDonnell’s support beyond anything that is realistic, Gordon Brown’s supporters are certainly making one thing crystal clear: they want to avoid a contest against me at all costs, and for good reason.

“His record on the environment, inequality, privatisation and PFI [Private Finance Initiative], means testing, and Trident means these are all issues on which he fears a challenge from me. If there is to be a contest, the Brown camp wants John McDonnell to be their opponent, and they are apparently prepared to release less than accurate figures in an attempt to fix it.”

— People should be told explicitly after a Budget whether they are winners or losers from the package brought in by the Chancellor, an all-party Commons committee said yesterday. In a veiled criticism of the presentation of Gordon Brown’s last Budget, in which he combined a 2p cut in income tax with the abolition of the lower 10p rate of tax, the Treasury Committee said that straightforward information on the impact on individuals should be contained in the official Budget document, known as the Red Book.

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