Balls denies leaked papers to oust Blair

LONDON: Labour Party heavyweight Ed Balls denied on Friday he was involved in a plot to oust former Prime Minister Tony Blair after a newspaper published documents it said were evidence of an anti-Blair conspiracy.

The Daily Telegraph obtained a trove of documents it said provided evidence of manoeuvring among Labour Party rivals to oust Blair, the party's most successful leader who was prime minister for a decade.

Blair stepped down mid-way through his third term in 2007, allowing long-time finance minister Gordon Brown to take over as prime minister for three years until he lost an election last year.

The bitter feuding between Blair and Brown is well-known but the newspaper said memos written by the two men showed the extent of the rift and revealed that Brown regarded Blair as a "muddled" lightweight.

The Daily Telegraph said the memos were from the personal papers of Balls, a close confidant of Brown who is now the Labour Party's finance spokesman.

It said the documents set out in detail how people close to Brown plotted from July 2005 to remove Blair from office. In a series of interviews, Balls denied there was a plot against Blair, now an international Middle East peace envoy."The idea there was a plot or coup is untrue and not justified by these papers," Balls told the BBC.

He said Blair and Brown and their aides were involved in discussions for several years on the transfer of power.

Balls said the papers appeared to be ones he had last seen in government offices more than a year ago when he was schools minister.

He said their publication now was "an attempt to divert attention away from what's happening in the country".

Labour leader Ed Miliband, also a close confidant of Brown, said the papers were "an over-hyped version of ancient history".

"The era of Blair and Brown is over. We are a party looking outwards to the country, not looking inwards and talking to ourselves," he told Sky News.

The Conservatives, who govern in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, said Balls' and Miliband's obsession with getting rid of Blair showed they could never be trusted with government again.

The government began a leak inquiry, saying it was investigating whether the papers had been in the keeping of a government department "and if so, whether there have been breaches of document security within government".

Copyright Reuters, 2011