The Times interview with Cherie Blair

Tony Blair is advising Gordon Brown during his current turmoil and has told him how he can win the next general election, Cherie Blair reveals in The Times today.

She says that Mr Blair would have stood down before the 2005 election if only Mr Brown had been prepared to implement her husband’s public service reforms.

Mr Blair suffered a “crisis of confidence” over Iraq and feared that he had become an electoral liability. But with Mr Brown “rattling the keys above his head” he decided he had to stay and fight for his domestic legacy.

She says that Mr Blair would have stood down “no question” if Mr Brown had been prepared to implement his plans on city academies, foundation hospitals and pensions. “Instead of which Tony felt he had no option but to stay on and fight for the things he believed in.”

Mrs Blair’s disclosures are contained in her autobiography, Speaking for Myself, which is serialised in The Times today and next week, catching the political and publishing worlds unawares as it was originally intended to appear in October.

It provides the most authoritative account so far of the reasons why Mr Blair decided not to stand down before the 2005 election and lays bare the tensions throughout the Blair years between the Prime Minister’s wife and his Chancellor.

In an interview with The Times and in extracts, Mrs Blair:

— Adds to the mystery surrounding the Granita pact. It has always been suggested that Mr Blair and Mr Brown struck a deal over the leadership in the Islington restaurant of that name. She says the discussions took place in her sister’s home days earlier;

— Reveals that she told Mr Blair in 1994 that it would be “ridiculous” that he should agree with Mr Brown to have only one term as leader;

— Reveals that Mr Blair used to tell Mr Brown that if he wanted to be leader he needed to get married;

— Discloses her fury with Mr Brown after he told ministers at Labour’s first Cabinet meeting in 1997 not to take a 26 per cent pay rise. “How dare Gordon do that? What did he know about financial commitments? He was a bachelor living on his own in a flat with a small mortgage”;

— Denies that her former “style guru” Carole Caplin is “dodgy”, says that it was her idea that Ms Caplin should give Mr Blair massages and insists that it was Ms Caplin who “kept me thin”.

She insists that she takes no pleasure from Mr Brown’s current difficulties even though “Gordon’s impatience” to take over from Mr Blair was a problem that her husband could have done without.

She acknowledges “the problem between Gordon and me” but denies that it is anything personal. It was because she had thought that her husband was the best person for the job. “So I was just terribly partisan for Tony and I’m sure Sarah is partisan for Gordon, and so she should be.”

Mrs Blair categorically denies the claim by Lord Levy recently that Mr Blair did not think that Mr Brown could beat David Cameron. “Lord Levy doesn’t know anything,” she says. “I know that Tony thinks Gordon could win the election and I know that he has spoken to Gordon about how he could do that. Tony has given Gordon advice. He and Gordon talk to each other even now.”

In the book Mrs Blair says that Mr Blair made it plain to Mr Brown in 1994 that he had no intention of remaining leader for ever and that when he did stand down he would support Mr Brown as his successor. “My own reading of the myth — that is, that a deal was done at Granita — was that Gordon didn’t want to admit that he’s agreed anything without first discussing it with his people.”

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