The future’s fair; the future’s orange

Tuned in to Sky News this evening to be greeted by the astonishing sight of Tony Blair singing the praises of Gordon Brown.

Who’d have thought it, eh?  Three years after the not wholly bloodless coup that saw him ejected from Downing Street and his auld adversary installed in his stead, there was the maestro, back in the limelight, centre stage in the incongruous surroundings of Trimdon Labour club.

Not that he looked that much like the old Blair, mind.  The last three years have not been kind to him.  His hair had greyed and thinned and he was almost painfully gaunt, the expensive Savile Row suit hanging from his narrowed frame.  Most startlingly, he was orange.  Bright orange.  Tangerine.

But it was Blair, all right.  There was no mistaking the gulps, the blinks, the jerky gestures, the faux emotion of the halting delivery, or the idiosyncratic enunciation: “Britain acted” became “Britain actud”.  Yes, there he was: Tony Blair lauding Gordon to the rafters.

But will it do Labour any good?  Hard to say.  Blair was a big hitter, of course, and the most successful Labour leader in history.  He is still sprinkled with stardust.

There again, he brings with him a lot of bad vibes, too, the very worst being the memory of Iraq.

But what cannot be doubted is that Gordon Brown must be feeling pretty desperate to trot out Tony Blair at this stage of the game.  Brown has always been desperate to make his own mark, not to go down in history as just the man who came in on Tony Blair’s coat-tails, only to be blown away at the next general election. 

It must have hurt him deeply – really deeply – to authorise Blair’s intervention today.