LONDON — In Labour circles, Tony Blair is never far from discussions about the party’s future direction.
But as current leader Keir Starmer draws closer to a general election polls overwhelmingly predict will see him ensconced in 10 Downing Street before the end of the year, it is another former prime minister who is making waves.
Gordon Brown, Blair’s former chancellor, friend — and rival — has in recent months been making an initially low-profile, but increasingly impactful, return to the political fray.
This is a new relatively development. Starmer has said before that he talks to Blair “a lot” about how his predecessor as leader of the opposition prepared for power in 1997, while former party big beast Peter Mandelson maintains a high profile as a figure with sway at the top of the party.
Less remarked on is the role of Brown, another former Labour PM who those in the know say will soon wield his own sphere of influence when — probably — the party returns to government this fall.
While Starmer does not appear in a rush to implement a lengthy blueprint Brown recently set out arguing for constitutional reform, the former prime minister is already leaving his mark in other ways.
Several of those connected to Brown in the past say he will have a higher profile once Labour returns from the wilderness.
Shades of Brown
Stewart Wood, a Labour peer and former aide to Brown, said the former PM would be an asset to Starmer’s party.
“He is Labour through and through,” he told POLITICO. “He is passionate about core Labour values equality, combating poverty, social cohesion— and angry about what the Tories have done to Britain and to public life. He has technical mastery of policy so, even 14 years after leaving power, he knows the fiscal and policy tricks needed to pull off change. And he is a master of the craft of political combat.”
Some say Brown never went away. Allies including his former Treasury Minister Yvette Cooper and mentee Ed Miliband are in the shadow Cabinet. His formidable ex-press secretary Damian McBride returned to the fold a few years ago to become a key Labour adviser.
Other pals of Brown, known as “the big clunking fist” for his emphatic style of politics and close allegiances, are poised for a return to frontline politics. Douglas Alexander, who held several Cabinet jobs both under Blair and Brown but lost his seat in 2015, is standing for parliament in East Lothian, one of Labour’s top target seats at the next election.
Kirsty McNeill, another former Brown aide, is also standing in a Scottish target seat. Both Alexander and McNeill have significant experience in the international development sector, and seem destined for rapid promotion.
Brown has paid close attention to selections for Scottish seats and been directly involved in discussions about candidates in his native Fife, according to two people close to the process.
The same two people claimed the former PM was even tempted to return himself after two local botched selections — in Glenrothes and his former seat of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath — but has now definitively ruled out a comeback.
Cat Headley, a political commentator and former Labour candidate, said there is an abiding “respect” for Brown in Scotland, adding that he has been working in recent months to help Scottish Labour Leader Anas Sarwar and his deputy Jackie Baillie. “He is part of the conversation and feeds into the work that Jackie and Anas and the wider Scottish Labour team do,” she added.
And the former PM’s influence goes wider than Scotland, with Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivering several name-checks for Brown in her recent Mais lecture.
Trouble ahead?
So with space for followers of both Blair and Brown opening up under a future Starmer government, can we expect to see a return to the notorious rivalry between the two that dogged British politics in the years straddling the millennium?
The alliance which brought Labour to power in 1997 famously soured soon afterwards, and by 2001 the tensions between Blair and his chancellor were known in Whitehall as “the Teebie-Geebies.”
Jim Murphy, a former Labour Cabinet minister and director of Arden Strategies, told POLITICO both Blair and Brown were “towering figures of their generation” and that today’s Labour leaders “will rightly take their advice but are coming to judgments based on challenges now, not those of 27 years ago.”
Murphy insisted it would be “wrong to see any cross-currents in the modern party as owing any kind of hangover from the Tony—Gordon years.”
However, one ally of Starmer, granted anonymity to speak frankly, predicts there will be “jostling — not for influence on Keir but for control of the narrative.”
This is likely to come from camps of allies close to the two men rather than directly from the protagonists.
Blair largely chooses to stay out of the domestic fray and lets his global think tank take the lead, while Brown is more prone to weigh in on day-to-day domestic matters.
On Tuesday, he called for an end to the Conservative government’s two-child benefit cap, despite this inevitably prompting uncomfortable questions for Starmer, who has failed to promise to scrap it.
His other recent interventions include drawing up a blueprint for constitutional reform — which Starmer commissioned — and chastising the current Conservative government for its management of the economy.
Starmer, for his part, pays homage to his two predecessors while professing to being “unbothered” about what tradition this or that policy approach might fall into, according to the ex-aide quoted above. “It’s just not how he thinks.”
Yet any shadow-boxing over the two men’s legacies and how they might apply to today’s Labour, will only intensify if Starmer wins office — at which point his policy agenda and leadership style will come more sharply into focus.
With a Labour victory in sight, Gordon Brown rides again
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