The article goes on to speculate that Peter Brown's creditials relative to this Murdoch-Blair deal may be very strong indeed, because he words with Murdoch's biggest Sunday paper and is a close friend of Peter Mandelson, "formerly Blair's own political svengali" and now a UK commissioner.

But, Christopher Jones, the Labour Party rep in America, says Blair openly promises to serve a full term, so why would he make secret deals?

Personally, I think Jones' comment is less than helpful, since that matter at hand is the securing of Murdoch's endorsement during a potentially very close election. It's possible a secret deal was struck unrelated to Brown (what about a deal to not withdraw UK troops from Iraq in the 3rd term), or related to Brown or to Blair's 3rd term. Other deals that I'm sure Murdoch would be keen on include Blair trying to get Brown shifted to another part of the Government, or even Blair agreeing that he'll run for a 4th term (assuming Blair is popular enough then) instead of stepping down to let Brown run, which is ALSO a popular rumor Tereshchuk fails to mention.