Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Tony Blair warned his ruling Labour party to focus on policies rather than the fight to succeed him as prime minister, as his most likely replacement, Gordon Brown, said he would give power away from central government.

Blair, in Manchester for his Labour Party's annual conference, has said it will be his last as leader. While he refused to directly endorse Brown as his successor in an interview with the BBC's ``Sunday AM'' program, Blair said he didn't ``resile from anything I've said before,'' including statements that Brown would be a ``brilliant'' prime minister.

``The way we win is to say here are these big challenges,'' Blair said, citing issues including pension funding and the state-run health services. ``We need strong answers properly worked out and properly thought through.''

Labour trails the opposition Conservatives by 33 percent to 37 percent in a YouGov poll in today's Sunday Times. The poll of 1,546 voters on Sept. 21-22 found 62 percent thought Labour was now at least as divided as the Conservatives were before they lost power in 1997.

``In a third term, you don't have the wave of euphoria'' that comes with being newly elected, Blair said. ``You get all the wear and tear of government.'' He said his party should position itself as experienced and able to resolve policy problems.

Brown offered signs of how a government led by him would act in a separate BBC interview, with ``The Politics Show.'' He cited his 1997 decision to give the Bank of England independence over setting interest rates as an example.

Brown

``The model of Bank of England independence offers us a way forward, because you give up power and you show that you are not anxious to hold on to powers that should be better administered or better dealt with by other people,'' he said. ``At the same time, you make this distinction which governments, perhaps politicians, have been reluctant to do, between setting a general policy guideline and letting people who are better able to manage just get on with it.''

Brown was endorsed as the next leader by Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain and Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett. ``As far as I'm concerned it's Gordon Brown's time,'' Beckett told Sky News

Blair gave his last speech as PM at a Party Conference yesterday. The rifts are definitely there, and the polls show that a lot of voters have been turned off by the infighting between him and Gordon Brown.