Brown held back money from Blair’s projects: Prescott

“On one occasion, Gordon wouldn’t let Tony see what was in his preparatory budget proposals. He even banned the Treasury from telling him. That was totally against tradition. The prime minister is always told in advance,” he said.

The memoirs serialised in The Sunday Times said Prescott had also urged the Blair to sack him at the height of their frequent rows but the ex-prime minister was “scared” of his chancellor.

The former deputy prime minister said that Blair reneged not once but several times on promises to make way for Brown at 10, Downing Street — the official residence of British Prime Minister — which obviously made the latter uncomfortable.

Prescott said he brokered “hundreds” of reconciliation meetings and telephone calls between them. He said Brown was “frustrating, annoying, bewildering and prickly”. He sulked so often during meetings that they had to be abandoned. On other occasions, he could “go off like a bloody volcano”.

The former deputy prime minister said that he also urged Brown to resign and fight Blair from the back benches, but the then chancellor “shrank” from such a bold gamble.

Blair and Brown were the architects of the revival of Britain’s Labour Party, broadening its appeal to middle-class voters who had previously backed the Conservatives and winning back power for the first time since 1979. They won three straight national elections from 1997.

But Prescott told the newspaper that during bitter rows he advised Brown to resign from Blair’s Cabinet and told Blair to sack his troublesome colleague. “Neither could take the final step,” Prescott said.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Sunday he didn’t agree with Prescott’s depiction of Brown as a prickly technocrat. Brown “is someone who is absolutely passionate about the values that he believes in,” Miliband told BBC. “He is clear about the goals we are pursuing and, yes, as he said, he does get into the detail, but that is important.”