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GUEST: Tony Benn, retired from the House of Commons in May 2001, after fifty years in Parliament, was the longest serving Labour MP in the history of the party, which he joined in 1942 – he is also the President of the Stop the War Coalition in Britain

Gordon Brown has been named the ruling Labor Party’s new leader in Britain. Winning the backing of 313 of the party’s 353 members, Brown is cleared to take over from Tony Blair as Prime Minister of Britain without challenge. In his latest remarks to the press, he promised to put health, education and housing policy at the center of his agenda to rebuild popularity with voters. Brown is seen as a centrist whose nomination ended an internal struggle within the waning Labor Party over issues such as the Iraq war, Britain’s nuclear arsenal, a higher minimum wage and re-nationalization of Britain’s railways. Current Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to step down on June 27 after more than a decade as prime minister. Brown’s main challenge will be to rebuild the Labor Party’s popularity which sank to the lowest in two decades amid unease about the war in Iraq and slow delivery of improvements to schools and hospitals. He has no more than three years before the next election to reverse a lead in the polls held by Britain’s Conservative Party.