Gordon Brown: I would have asked Tom Watson to end the plot against Blair if he'd told me about it

By Jonathan Walker on Jun 11, 12 02:11 PM in Politics

Gordon Brown would have told the plotters who forced Tony Blair to quit to stop their rebellion - if he had known about it, he has told the Leveson inquiry.

The former Prime Minister insisted he would have told Black Country MP Tom Watson (Lab West Bromwich East) to have stopped the plot, if only Mr Watson had told him what was going on.

Mr Watson was the most high-profile Labour politician to sign a letter in 2006 demanding Mr Blair set a date for his resignation. Labour had fought the 2005 general election on the basis that Mr Blair would serve a full third term in office.

But Mr Brown was accused of orchestrating the plot - especially after it emerged that Mr Watson visited him in his Fife home over a weekend in early September 2006, before the letter became public (but apparently after it had been written).

Both men insist they did not discuss politics. Mr Watson told the Leveson inquiry that he dropped off a "Baby Gro" for Mr Brown's new baby Fraser, born earlier that year.

Mr Brown has now told the inquiry: "Our baby had just been born. He was bringing a present for our baby with his wife and his family and we were talking about children.
"If I'd known that he was planning a political initiative I would have told him not to do it but I knew nothing about it."

He added: "It was the wrong thing to do and I told him so once I found out about it."
Mr Watson doesn't appear to have been one of the plot's ringleaders - the letter was organised by former Birmingham MP Sion Simon and Chris Bryant, currently Labour's Shadow Immigration Minister - but attention focused on him because he was serving in Blair's government as a Defence Minister at the time, and because he was known to be close to Mr Brown.

The rebellion was successful, and Mr Blair announced on September 7 2006 that he would quit in September 2007. It was widely expected that Mr Brown would inherit the top job, as indeed he did.

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