Cherie Blair should stand as an MP when he husband quits the Commons next election, Bill Clinton has suggested.

The former US President, whose own wife Hillary is a US senator, has even offered to campaign for Mrs Blair should she take up his advice.

“When he’s [Tony Blair] done and she wants a go, it would please me greatly,” Mr Clinton said in an interview with the Sunday Times yesterday.

“She is an enormously able person. I love her. If she ever campaigned for office and wanted me to go ringing doorbells for her, I’d be happy to do it.”

Mrs Blair stood for parliament before, for the seat of North Thanet in 1983, but she lost.

One of Britain’s leading human rights lawyers, she has courted controversy by going public on political issues -most recently when she urged the government not undermine civil liberties with new anti-terror legislation.