Gordon Brown blamed Tony Blair for the election of David Cameron as leader of the Conservative party in 2005, according to an unvarnished account of tensions between the two architects of New Labour published in the Guardian tomorrow.
Jonathan Powell, who served as Blair's chief of staff during his decade in Downing Street, writes that Brown accused the former prime minister of being "behind" Cameron. In his memoirs titled The New Machiavelli and serialised in the Guardian and Observer this weekend, Powell recounts how:
• Brown reacted furiously when Blair suggested they discuss over dinner how to deal with Cameron after his election as Conservative leader in December 2005. • Blair felt physically threatened when Brown demanded that he give a date for his departure in 2001.
• Brown, who repeated his demands for Blair to go in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, cheered up when there was a terrorist threat to the life of the prime minister.
Powell's book, which also covers Blair's struggle to reform public servicesand his difficult relations with EU leaders, is designed to test Machiavelli's maxims in The Prince and The Discourse. "The world has changed dramatically in the intervening 500 years since Machiavelli, but many of the qualities required of leaders and the methods of governing for good or ill are remarkably similar," he writes.
• Read extracts from The New Machiavelli, Jonathan Powell's new book, in tomorrow's Guardian
