Blair offers Brown job security

Analysis
By Nick Assinder
Political Correspondent, BBC News website

Labour's first set-piece press conference of the official election campaign was a strange affair.

Blair looked to Brown's future

To the prime minister's obvious irritation, it began with a series of questions about what would happen to him and his chancellor in the days after the poll and any Labour victory.

Would Gordon Brown - sitting alongside the prime minister - remain chancellor?

And how exactly would Tony Blair handle his own promised retirement, and who would replace him?

Both these questions had been provoked by comments made by the prime minister himself.

Firstly, earlier in the day, he had spoken about the chancellor's apparent security of tenure in the Treasury and secondly, last autumn, he had declared he would quit some time during any third term.

Big choices

Valid questions then, even though they failed to go to the issue he and Mr Brown were attempting to put at the centre of the campaign, namely the economy.

And, of course, they gave a taste of how the political agenda could unfold in the days immediately after the election, if Labour won a third term.

These two "big choices", to coin the prime minister's phrase, would almost certainly dominate the early days of a third New Labour government.

And the prime minister seemed to answer the first question with some clarity.

Brown may want the top job

Setting out the chancellor's economic record, he said that while he did not want to break the protocol that prime minister's didn't reveal reshuffles before the event, it would be foolish to put it all at risk.

So Gordon Brown is safe then. He certainly didn't look particularly threatened.

Economic policy

But during question time only minutes before, Mr Blair had refused to be drawn on a question about the chancellor's "good future prospects".

And pressed on the matter during the press conference, he became increasingly agitated, insisting he had already gone further than any prime minister would normally go.

Next question, then, was about his own intentions after the poll, should he still be prime minister.

The exasperation was now given full vent. "I suppose at some time we might get to talk about economic policy," he said before going on to say he wasn't going to start talking about any of that again.

At one point he sighed something along the lines that he couldn't be bothered with it all.

Eventually things did move onto the economy, but this had been an irritating, difficult event for Tony Blair who must know that questions about his chancellor's future and his own plans will return time and again throughout the campaign.

He hopes, of course, his unusually candid answer will have stopped questions about Mr Brown, while reassuring the chancellor's supporters both in the Commons and the country that their man is safe in his job and possibly in line for the top job after the election.

Mr Brown, as usual, looked entirely unfazed by the proceedings.

Perhaps he knows something we don't.