Britain:Leading "Blairites" followed departing British prime minister Tony Blair's example yesterday and endorsed Gordon Brown as future Labour leader amid evidence of a concerted effort to unite and renew the party.
Less than 24 hours after Mr Blair's resignation statement, Mr Brown launched his leadership campaign knowing that, at most, he faces a token challenge from the left, if either Michael Meacher or John McDonnell can muster the necessary signatures to get their name on the ballot paper.
Labour's National Executive Committee is expected to confirm later today that nominations will open on Monday and close on Wednesday night ahead of a planned contest that could become a one-way conversation between the prime minister-in-waiting and the British people.
Mr Brown started that conversation yesterday declaring himself "a candidate to be leader of the Labour Party and to lead a new government", offering "a new leadership for a new time".
Launching his long-planned campaign at the Imagination Gallery in London, Mr Brown embraced the Blairite "modernising" agenda while hinting at potential breaks from the Blair era - signalling priorities for further constitutional reform, with "a better constitution", greater transparency and accountability, a new ministerial code and increased parliamentary involvement in issues of war and peace.
Newly resistant to "celebrity" politics, Mr Brown also stressed that he would put substance over "spin" - although sceptics familiar with New Labour ways might have thought they detected old habits enduring in his pledge "to lead a government humble enough to know its place".
Mr Brown was plainly gratified to finally receive Mr Blair's endorsement as his successor, although again there would be scepticism at his suggestion that Mr Blair had always intended to give it when finally making "his own decision" about when to leave office.
The resignation timetable Mr Blair outlined on Thursday was the inevitable consequence of last September's failed coup, which forced him to agree that he would quit the stage before this year's Labour conference.
Yesterday's backing from arch-Blairites Alan Milburn and Stephen Byers only followed the final collapse of attempts to find a heavyweight challenger last weekend, when home secretary John Reid followed environment secretary David Miliband in ruling himself out of the race.
Finally setting their often turbulent and difficult relationship behind him, Mr Blair declared: "I am absolutely delighted to give my full support to Gordon as the next leader of the Labour Party and as prime minister and to fully endorse him."
Mr Blair continued: "He has shown, as perhaps the most successful chancellor in our country's history, that he's got the strength and the experience and the judgment to make a great prime minister."
At his launch Mr Brown said: "Tony Blair has led our country for 10 years with distinction, with courage, with passion and with insight and in the weeks and months ahead my task is to show that I have the new ideas, the vision and the experience to earn the trust of the British people."
He went on: "Today there are new priorities and I offer a new leadership for this new time." Referring again to the "moral compass" given him by his parents, he said his core belief was that the Britain he believed in "is a Britain of fairness and opportunity for all British citizens". And Mr Brown said to his party: "We have always served the country best when at every point we start from the concerns, the struggles and the rising aspirations of hard-working families - and I say to the country, your priorities will be my driving purpose."