Downing Street has played down weekend media stories suggesting Tony Blair had to be talked out of resignation.

Number 10 has insisted that the prime minister was now focussed on a successful third term agenda.

"The simple message is this. These stories will come and these stories will go," the official spokesman said.

"The prime minister believes it is his job to get on with the work the electorate would expect him to do."

"We are moving forward on Iraq... and now we are seeing improvement plans for the public services," he added.

"Today we will see the spending review which makes all these things possible."

The spokesman claimed Blair and Gordon Brown "work very closely together and will continue to do so".

Allies of the chancellor also moved to distance themselves from the reports.

"Is it really in Gordon Brown's interest to go around destabilising the prime minister, the Labour Party and the wider Labour movement at this stage in the parliament?" one adviser to Brown told the Guardian newspaper.

And on Sunday Blairite senior ministers slammed the story.

Education secretary Charles Clarke described the reports that the prime minister was preparing to quit a few weeks ago as "nonsense".

And health secretary John Reid, who like Clarke was named as one of four Cabinet colleagues who persuaded Blair to stay on, said: "It didn't happen that way at all."

BBC political editor Andrew Marr first broke the story on Friday, reporting that Blair was on the brink of leaving Number 10 over ongoing difficulties in Iraq and his rift with  Brown.

Clarke, Reid, culture secretary Tessa Jowell and trade secretary Patricia Hewitt were all thought to have talked the Labour leader out of a resignation, which he was considering announcing on July 3.

The Sunday Telegraph also suggested that Blair's wife Cherie, as well as close friend and colleague Lord Falconer, had a key part to play in dismissing the idea and deciding to fight on through the next general election.

Overblown

But Reid said on Sunday the story had been overblown.

"First of all I do not believe that Tony Blair ever planned to resign. There was no plan, there was no intention for Tony Blair to resign," he told GMTV.

"Secondly, while it is true that we said to Tony Blair, and to you publicly, all of us, many more than four 'you have the overwhelming support of the Cabinet, the Parliamentary Labour Party and so on', Tony was never going to go. That doesn't constitute pleading or begging with him.

"We said nothing in private to him that we haven't all said publicly to you, which is that Tony Blair has been engaged, he has been active, he is active and actively looking forward to the next few years.

"He will lead us into the next general election and, God and the electorate willing, will be prime minister in this country for many years to come."

And Clarke added on the BBC that around six weeks ago he had asked for a "five minute slot... one to one" with Blair before a routine meeting "because of all the media speculation at the time".

"It wasn't a case of stiffening his resolve at all," he told the Breakfast with Frost programme.

"I wanted to say that I strongly supported what he was doing and wanted to offer to help in any way I could."

The education secretary said the meeting lasted much less than the five minutes because Blair was "completely chipper and completely up for it".