Sunday, September 28, 2003
The Deal was interesting. In places there was an incredible intense connection between the actors playing Blair and Brown as they slowly became friends amongst the detritus of the Labour Party of the early Eighties until the middle-point in the Nineties when, if the story the show puts forward is true, their marriage broke down due to 'irreconcilable differences' and Tony took custody of the Labour Party. And, short of the pair telling us exactly what they discussed in a restaurant in Islington, this is the closest we can ever guess. The acting was great all round, with clever use of actors playing the parts of politicians that would have a personal role in Tony and Gordon's story, John Smith, Peter Mandelson, but then also stock footage for the people that wouldn't, Thatcher, Major, Kinnock. In the first half of the story, which dealt with what happened to Blair and Brown during Labour's Wilderness Years, it reminded me of the similar show the BBC had done about Labour part spin doctors and party workers over a similar period, we had Gordon Brown arriving at the polling station in 1991 which would announce that he'd kept his seat, but learning at the same time that Labour had lost again. We had Tony Blair sitting in his darkened front room strumming away on his guitar.
All this followed Inside the Mind of Tony Blair in which journalists and a bevy of psychiatrists were canvased to give their opinions on Tony Blair and what drives him. It was fairly interesting stuff, how his first term persona of trying to agree with everything that everyone said to him has given way to a more unbending politician who has beliefs, such as the existence of WMD, and won't be put off by a lack of support or indeed evidence to back it up. In a week when the Hutton Enquiry has torpedoed the credibility of this Government and key figures within it, it just shows how useless and unfit the Conservatives are to hold any official position in the Houses of Parliament that they are not standing up and saying "look at us! we can offer an alternative!"
All this followed Inside the Mind of Tony Blair in which journalists and a bevy of psychiatrists were canvased to give their opinions on Tony Blair and what drives him. It was fairly interesting stuff, how his first term persona of trying to agree with everything that everyone said to him has given way to a more unbending politician who has beliefs, such as the existence of WMD, and won't be put off by a lack of support or indeed evidence to back it up. In a week when the Hutton Enquiry has torpedoed the credibility of this Government and key figures within it, it just shows how useless and unfit the Conservatives are to hold any official position in the Houses of Parliament that they are not standing up and saying "look at us! we can offer an alternative!"
