Blair 'considered serving just two terms'

Alastair Campbell has revealed that Tony Blair considered resigning as prime minister before the Iraq war.

The former Number 10 director of communications said on Sunday that Blair had told him he "never really wanted to do more than two full terms".

Their conversation came in July 2002 amid political pressure over domestic reforms and the build up to war in Iraq.

Campbell told the Sunday Times he advised the former prime minister that pre-announcing his decision to step down would make him a "lame duck" leader, although he "wasn't totally opposed" to the idea.

The July 11, 2002 entry from the diaries to be published on Monday said: "TB called me through and we went out for a chat on the terrace.

"Philip Gould had briefed him on how his trust ratings had really dipped. He said 'In truth I've never really wanted to do more than two full terms.'

"It was pretty clear to me that he had just about settled his view, that he would sometime announce it, say that he was going to stay for the full term, but not go into the election as leader.

"The big question was the same as before - does it give him an authority of sorts, or does it erode that authority, and do people just move automatically towards GB [Gordon Brown]?"

Interviewed later on BBC1's Sunday AM programme, Campbell also defended his decision to publish details of private conversations.

"There is a view that actually you shouldn't keep a diary and if you do keep a diary you certainly shouldn't write a book," he said.

"That's a perfectly legitimate view and I understand people who have that view.

"If I was coming along having had a decade working for Tony Blair and saying 'right there was me, that was my job saying what a great guy he is and I am now producing a book saying actually I don't think that at all, I thought it was all terrible'.

"It's not that sort of book. It is an attempt to say to people: forget all the stuff you have read and you hear and the rest of it - some of it is accurate and some of it is not; this is my perspective on what it was like while I was there."