One was a plucky rock’n’roller, the other a lover of social justice. Together, they led Labour to a landslide victory in 1997, as a cast of veteran insiders recall in rose-tinted fashion
In Blair & Brown: The New Labour Revolution (BBC Two), we see a photo of Tony Blair aged 20, all teeth and no top. He looks like everybody’s worst nightmare – a half-naked public schoolboy and wannabe badass who – when he wasn’t studying law at Oxford – was picking out Stairway to Heaven on a guitar to impress the ladies. Rock’n’roll’s loss was Britain’s gain. Or catastrophe – depending on your stance on the Iraq war.
The incidental music, Layla Pt 2 by Derek and the Dominos, embellishes the sexy rocker theme. For me, though, it tells another story: the same tune was used in Goodfellas over a montage of mob hits, with a voiceover by Ray Liotta. Though there were fewer body bags, Blair’s rise was no less ruthless.
As for Gordon Brown, he was never rock’n’roll. Against a montage of east Fife’s redundant mills and collieries, a careworn 2021 Brown presents his young self as motivated by social justice. This self-regarding image of selflessness is undone by footage of him as Edinburgh University’s 24-year-old rector, lolling in pomp at an official meeting on what looks like a throne. From early on, he too was fixated on power – the upstart thane eyeing the crown. Brown’s was the old story, says Labour’s former home secretary John Reid: “The prince couldn’t wait for the king to die.”
