Gordon Brown has backed Yvette Cooper for the Labour leadership.
The former prime minister's office announced that he had given the shadow home secretary his first preference vote.
In a recent speech, Mr Brown had issued a thinly-veiled warning to the party not to pick left-winger Jeremy Corbyn but gave no endorsement to any of his three rivals.
But his office confirmed that he believed Ms Cooper was the best of the quartet to succeed Ed Miliband at the head of the Opposition - and had already cast his vote.
His second preference was Andy Burnham and third Liz Kendall, it said ahead of a weekend appearance at the Edinburgh Book Festival where he will set out his choice.
In his only previous intervention, a high-profile 50-minute speech in London he did not mention frontrunner Mr Corbyn be name - viewed as unelectable by many Labour MPs - but warned of the consequences of retreating to becoming a "party of protest".
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel