Peter Mandelson warned Tony Blair not to allow Gordon Brown\u2019s supporters to wreck Labour\u2019s 2005 general election campaign from within, according to newly released government files.<\/p>\n
Relations between Blair and his chancellor were strained in the autumn of 2004 as Labour<\/a> prepared to try for a third successive election victory. Brown and his allies believed the prime minister had reneged on a promise to step down towards the end of Labour\u2019s second term to allow him to take over.<\/p>\n In one file released to the National Archives<\/a> in Kew, west London, the now Lord Mandelson warned Blair that such tensions would need to be carefully managed during the election campaign.<\/p>\n Before leaving for Brussels to take up the post of Britain\u2019s EU commissioner, the former cabinet minister said one of the challenges would be \u201cagreeing where GB\u2019s people can be included without giving them a veto or scope for insider demolition\u201d.<\/p>\n Peter Mandelson at the Labour party conference in 2005. Photograph: Russell Boyce\/Reuters<\/p>\n While Brown would want to inherit a healthy Commons majority when he did eventually take over, he would not want Blair to get the credit, he wrote. \u201cA big issue will be you personally. The media will want to bring pressure on you to a new level of intensity. Next door [Brown] will want a good majority but will not want you to do well.\u201d<\/p>\n In the event, the two men were able to patch up their differences sufficiently to campaign together, although the tensions quickly re-emerged once Labour was back in office<\/a>.<\/p>\n