Mandelson: I'll back Brown as next leader

Peter Mandelson, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, has made an astonishing pledge to Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, saying he will support him as the Labour Party's next leader when Tony Blair steps down.

Peter Mandelson, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, has made an astonishing pledge to Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, saying he will support him as the Labour Party's next leader when Tony Blair steps down.

The private promise by Mr Mandelson was made earlier this year, at a time when a long-running feud between him and Mr Brown was compounded by a fierce dispute over how the Government should handle the issue of British single currency in the run-up to the next general election.

The unsolicited loyalty pledge is the latest twist in their six-year battle, which began when Mr Mandelson switched his support from Mr Brown to Mr Blair as the right man to lead Labour after John Smith's death in 1994.

Mr Mandelson's surprise move is revealed in the paperback edition of Donald Macintyre's biography, Mandelson and the Making of New Labour, which is published this week. Extracts will appear in this newspaper tomorrow.

It says that since returning to the Cabinet last year the Northern Ireland Secretary "not once but twice ... insisted to the Chancellor personally that he would support [Mr] Brown in the leadership contest which eventually will follow [Mr] Blair's standing down - whenever that proved to be".

The book discloses that Mr Mandelson first made such a promise when he was the Cabinet Office Minister in January 1998, at his first face-to-face meeting alone with Mr Brown since the 1994 crisis. It says that the Chancellor "could be forgiven for wondering howbankable a promise this would prove if the modernising forces gathered round an alternative candidate as they had seemed to gather round Tony Blair after John Smith's death in 1994".

But it adds that Mr Mandelson went out of his way to repeat his pledge during other meetings with Mr Brown.

The move by Mr Mandelson will be partly seen as an attempt to prevent the continuing differences between Mr Blair's two closest cabinet allies from disrupting Labour's general election campaign, which they will run jointly.

However, the book reveals further behind-the-scenes tensions between them over the single currency.

Mr Brown argued strongly last year that Mr Blair should not chair the launch of the Britain In Europe group, but Mr Mandelson fought successfully for the Prime Minister both to launch the campaign and then in March [of this year] to allow it to call openly for euro membership.

The book reveals Mr Mandelson has pressed Mr Blair to set a date - probably October 2002 - by which the Government would assess whether its five economic tests for euro membership had been met.

The book was the first to document the deep personal animosities within Labour's high command and revealed how Mr Blair begged Mr Mandelson, in a private letter in 1996, not to sacrifice Labour's election chances in a "Titanic but ultimately irrelevant personality feud".

It shows how the clashes continued into government with allies of the Chancellor - though not Mr Brown himself - suspected of being behind the revelation of Mr Mandelson's £373,000 home loan from the Treasury minister Geoffrey Robinson.

This led to his resignation from the Cabinet in December 1998. The book says that Mr Blair "actively encouraged" Mr Mandelson to quit.

Yesterday, another book claimed that the Chancellor knew Mr Mandelson's loan would be disclosed, saying it was leaked by "a senior politician closely associated with Gordon Brown".

Andrew Rawnsley says in his book Servants of the People: "Even if the Chancellor did not pull the trigger, he knew it was being squeezed. Whether or not he gave the precise instruction to strike against Mandelson, Brown willed the act."

Mr Rawnsley claims that Mr Brown urged the Prime Minister to sack Mr Robinson, even though he was a close ally of the Chancellor, because he had become an "embarrassment" to the Government.

* Mandelson and the Making of New Labour is published by HarperCollins (£6.99).