Harriet Harman, Labour’s acting leader, has said Tony Blair “saw shadows” where they did not exist over allegations that she was involved with a plot, along with her husband Jack Dromey and Gordon Brown, to damage Blair in the “cash for peerages” affair. The Labour deputy leader has added that the suspicions were “a reflection of quite how bad the relationship had become between” Blair and Brown.
In 2006 Dromey, treasurer to the Labour party, revealed he did not know about loans made to the party by certain individuals who were made peers. In a recent interview with Mary Riddell to help promote his new memoir ‘A Journey’, Blair was asked if he suspected Harman of being “implicated in his destabilisation”. Blair replied: “The answer is that I honestly don’t know. I just don’t.”
But in an exclusive interview ahead of next week’s Labour conference, Harman tells tomorrow’s New Statesman: “I absolutely did not talk to Gordon about Jack as treasurer and what he was doing on the loans for peerages at all, in any shape or form, and neither did Jack – and the idea that somehow Jack and I were in a plot with Gordon against Tony is completely, completely not true. But I think it’s a reflection of quite how bad the relationship had become between the two of them that Tony saw shadows where there weren’t [any]. I think that’s a real shame because it’s absolutely not true.”
In the interview, Harman also:
*Blames the economic situation on her refusal to advise Gordon Brown to step down as prime minister in January this year when she had a meeting with him amid the “coup attempt” led by Geoff Hoon, Patricia Hewitt and Charles Clarke.
*Reveals she, too, will write a book, saying “I don’t think men should be the only ones who have their say”.
*Talks more openly than ever about the “horrible” time she was sacked over a Welfare dispute by Blair and Brown in 1998.
*Defends the controversial move by Labour to elect its own chief whip.
*Says she will “probably” take on a shadow ministerial portfolio aside from her continuing role as elected deputy leader.
For the full interview, see the magazine out tomorrow.
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