Tony Blair has dismissed allegations that he warned Donald Trump that UK intelligence agencies may have spied on him as a “complete fabrication”.
The claims are contained in the book Fire And Fury: Inside The Trump White House, which has sparked furore in Washington with explosive claims about feuding within the US president’s inner circle.
Mr Trump stoked the controversy by stating that his former senior adviser, Steve Bannon – who told author Michael Wolff that meetings between Trump campaign officials and a lawyer linked to the Kremlin amounted to treason – had “lost his mind”.
The Times reported that Mr Wolff’s book contains an account of a meeting between Mr Blair and senior Trump aide Jared Kushner at the White House last February.
Mr Blair told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “This story is a complete fabrication, literally beginning to end.
“I’ve never had such conversations in the White House, outside of the White House, with Jared Kushner, with anybody else.”
Fox News had claimed Barack Obama asked British intelligence to spy on Trump Tower (Andrew Milligan/PA)
Asked if he had met Mr Kushner, the former prime minister replied: “Of course I have met him and we discussed the Middle East peace process.”
Mr Blair insisted he had not been “angling for some job” during the meeting.
“I never sought one, was never offered one, don’t want one,” he added.
According to Mr Wolff, Mr Blair shared a “juicy rumour” that the British had Trump campaign staff under surveillance during the election, “monitoring its telephone calls and other communications and possibly even Trump himself”.
The former PM reportedly gave the impression that Barack Obama’s administration had hinted that such activities would be helpful.
The book reportedly suggested that Mr Blair was angling for a role as Middle East adviser to the president at the time.
A month after the supposed meeting, then White House press spokesman Sean Spicer provoked a transatlantic spat by repeating claims made on Fox News that Mr Obama had asked British intelligence to spy on Trump Tower.
The Government’s GCHQ surveillance centre dismissed the claims at the time as “utterly ridiculous”.