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Labour backbencher Peter Kilfoyle has said Tony Blair is "completely unsuitable" to be president of the European Union.
The Liverpool Walton MP tabled a Commons motion in which he made clear his opposition to the former prime minister's potential candidacy.
The early day motion states that Mr Blair's unsuitability lies "on his record in international affairs". It says foreign secretary David Miliband is "both wrong and unwise" to promote Mr Blair and calls for a "full public debate before the government contemplates embarking on such a recommendation".
The Guardian newspaper reported this morning Gordon Brown has asked two senior civil servants to lobby behind closed doors on behalf of Mr Blair.
Downing Street dismissed the claims as "speculation", but the issue of an "El Presidente Blair" dominated the news agenda and David Cameron's press conference. The Conservative leader said he was opposed to an "all-singing, all-dancing, all-acting" president.
Mr Kilfoyle has been a persistent critic of the government's commitment to Iraq. In 2007 he published Lies, Damned Lies and Iraq, an in-depth analysis into how the case for war was misrepresented.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The pandemic of swine flu may be hitting a peak in the Northern Hemisphere, global health officials said on Friday, but they cautioned it was far from over.
