A nation mourns the passing of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown
31 December 2055
The deaths of the Earl of Sedgefield, aged 102, and Mr Gordon Brown, 104, brings to a sad conclusion the most remarkable and prolonged feud in British political history.
It would, of course, be improper to speculate on the precise circumstances before the inquest, but police have confirmed that at around 2.30 p.m. on Christmas Day two elderly men were involved in a fracas at the Golden Handshake Nursing Home, the opulent country house in Surrey favoured as the final home of many wealthy civil servants and local government employees. Both men later succumbed to their injuries.
According to nursing staff, the two were seen squabbling over who was to sit in the large, gilded easy chair in the bay window of the Prescott Lounge. The chair, it is alleged, was normally occupied in the afternoons by the Earl, but over Christmas lunch he had promised it to Mr Brown as a special treat. Mr Brown, according to reports, was later angered to find the Earl sound asleep in the chair, apparently oblivious to the offer he had made.
In the demise of the two men there were faint echoes of their distant political careers. Fifty years ago this winter it seemed inevitable that the Earl of Sedgefield — Tony Blair as he then was — would finally hand over the job of prime minister to Gordon Brown, an honour which the latter believed rightfully to be his. As we now know, Gordon Brown never did become premier. In spite of a series of bruising Commons defeats, the Earl clung to office until May 2010, the last possible date for a general election. In doing so, he often reminded people, he was merely fulfilling the promise he had made to serve a full third term as prime minister.
Brown was hastily elected party leader for the 2010 election, but by then the electoral situation was hopeless. His attempt to buck a collapsing housing market by block-buying £20 billion worth of homes for public sector workers had an air of desperation and provoked fury among a heavily mortgaged home-owning public. Labour was reduced in Parliament to a rump of 135 seats.
Gordon Brown never wholly gave up his ambition of leading the country, however. According to some visitors to the Golden Handshake Home, he often told nurses, ‘I’m going to be Prime Minister, you know.’ One of the staff in recent days said it was ‘impos sible to understand anything the former Chancellor said’ — but those who knew him better reported that his fine intellect was undimmed to the end; it is just that few young people these days have a grounding in non-endogenous growth theory.
The Earl of Sedgefield, by contrast, is said to have had a serene air in his last years. Although somewhat withdrawn after the Countess Sedgefield passed away three years ago — having choked to death during a bout of primal screaming in a rebirthing ceremony in a Mayan temple — he was said to enjoy his daily ride through the grounds of the Golden Handshake. The faint smile on his thin lips was still there even when he was wheeled past the gates, where beggars would thrust their hands through the bars. ‘Industrial accident — haven’t worked since I was 70,’ said a scrawled note clutched by a one-legged vagrant who had camped at the gates for some years. The Earl, who never lost the charm which once so endeared him to the British public, would always wish the man well before being wheeled to his favourite gazebo.
Many commentators will now ask: just what was the Sedgefield legacy? Foreign tourists often cite the old PFI hospitals, those quaint institutions which feature in so many of today’s period dramas, with their wretched patients being consumed by flesheating bugs. But few who actually went inside one — still less those who were treated there and survived — choose to romanticise them. Elsewhere, although no Christian has set foot in the Islamic Republic of Iraq for more than 40 years, it is said that the Earl is revered there for his role in destroying the godless regime of Saddam Hussein which preceded today’s stern theocracy.
But at home, the Earl of Sedgefield’s most positive legacy is unquestionably the reestablishment of a ruling class, appropriately remunerated thanks to extensive new taxes on tradesmen. State officials were established with good pensions and livings, which enabled them to build themselves beautiful houses. The working man was far from forgotten, however: he benefited hugely from the paternal leadership of the ruling classes. It was the Earl of Sedgefield who first appreciated that it is not freedom, self-improvement or a decent education for his children that the working man seeks; it is beer. It was he who first allowed alehouses to open for 24 hours a day.
As outgoing prime minister, Tony Blair was richly rewarded for his reforms. The Duke of Witney, or ‘Dave’ Cameron as he then was, bestowed upon him the title of the Earl of Sedgefield. It was a cunning ploy: when Blair accepted, Gordon Brown and his remaining small coterie were so offended that they broke away to form the short-lived Hairshirt Party. While Brown embarked upon his long sojourn in the wilderness, the Earl settled into what he hoped would be life as a well-paid elder statesman on the global lecture circuit.
It was a life rudely interrupted when his beloved home in Connaught Square was repossessed during the catastrophic property slump of 2011. After a few dismal weeks at his other home in Trimdon Colliery, now the Blair National Museum, he eagerly took up the offer of a job as a ranch hand on the Texan estate of former US president George W. Bush. Though he never fully mastered the lasso — on one occasion nearly throttling his faithful assistant, Lord Hoon — he was an instant hit with tour parties, who would pay considerable sums to watch him in action.
Countess Sedgefield, meanwhile, established herself as the Queen of daytime television: before long, the Earl had joined her in the chatshow studio and Tony and Cherie remains the highest-rated NBC show of all time. A stream of actresses, oil millionaires and charismatic preachers made their way to the couple’s pastel-coloured sofa, but the real genius of the show was the occasional appearance of elderly trailer-park residents, complaining about their pension and healthcare benefits. To much cheering from the audience, the Earl would then show his tough side, berating them for allowing themselves to remain in poverty. The Earl was soon able to afford a gracious residence in Houston, furnished with gifts from antique dealers whom the Countess had invited on to the show. There they lived for many years, until the Countess’s bizarre demise. The Earl then returned to Britain to take up residence at the Golden Handshake, occupying a suite left to him by the late Sir Cliff Richard.
According to instructions in his will, following a lavish funeral in Houston, the Earl’s ashes will be scattered in the grounds of Trimdon Working Men’s Club next Wednesday ‘to remind people where I came from’. The few remaining members of the club have generously agreed to fund a small memorial.
Ross Clark is the author of The Great Before, a satirical novel published at www.greatbefore.com.
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