TONY BLAIR and Gordon Brown were again at odds over the timing of the Labour succession last night after the Chancellor used his conference speech to put the Prime Minister on notice to quit.

After Mr Brown suggested that he would spend the next year preparing for his task of renewing the party, No 10 insisted that Mr Blair had no intention of leaving early and had more than enough work for two years or more. “He is committed to a programme of work and wants to see it through,” Mr Blair’s official spokesman said.

It meant that a carefully planned exercise to stop the timing of Mr Blair’s departure dominating the conference fell apart as Mr Brown — and, apparently, John Prescott — hinted that they expected Mr Blair to indicate in a year’s time his plans to go.

Mr Brown announced to the conference that during the next year he would visit every region and nation to discuss with Labour members the economic, social and constitutional changes that were needed to build for the future.

His tour, built on the understanding that he will be the next leader, was called presumptuous by some leading Blairites. “Gordon is the future monarch visiting his realm,” one said.

And the interpretation being put on his announcement provoked No 10 to insist that Mr Blair’s intention remained to stay on for some time yet.

In a repeat of past conference spats between the two, No 10 issued excerpts of Mr Blair’s conference speech today that emphasised the long-term nature of the challenges he believes he still has to face before he is ready to hand over the mantle to Mr Brown.

Officials said that the speech would set out the challenges that Britain faced and the policy programme needed to respond to it, and that the solution to challenges “lies in not less new Labour but more new Labour”. Mr Blair will say that only a combination of detailed policies and new Labour values would secure a fourth successive election victory.

But the impatience of the Brownites about securing an exit date from Mr Blair became obvious at the conference. A new book about Mr Prescott reveals that he has told Mr Blair to set out a timetable for his departure at next year’s conference, allowing Mr Brown to take over in the spring or early summer of 2007. Among senior Cabinet ministers that is considered increasingly likely.

In a speech during which the conference clearly treated him as the leader-in-waiting, Mr Brown fulfilled all the advance promises that he would carry on Mr Blair’s reform programme. He signed up to the choice and diversity agenda that Mr Blair has pushed as the centrepiece of Labour’s third term and he spoke of his aim of creating a “homeowning, share owning, asset owning, wealth owning democracy”.

But he was also critical of the way in which new Labour has conducted itself in its first terms — hinting that it needed a moral dimension to its policies. The criticisms were subtle but some saw them as being aimed at Mr Blair. He even suggested that the party’s best days were still ahead when he asserted that his assigned task of renewing new Labour would be as “profound a challenge, as rigorous a task and as great an achievement” as the creation of new Labour.

The Chancellor said that his “moral compass” had come from the words of his parents. But he said that Labour had so far failed to talk enough about the “ethical foundations” of its policies. “This is nothing less than the moral basis of the society we seek to create, “ he said.

Mr Brown’s aides later said that his tour would begin in the next few months and would also inform the contents of the interim report on the next spending review, which is due next July.

Some ministers were critical of Mr Brown for raising the timing issue when everything at conference has so far moved in his favour. He has been endorsed as the next leader by one Cabinet minsiter after another, some saying that there should not even be a contest.

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