Feuds on film: cinema’s best on-screen clashes

With the recent rumours of increasing tension between Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, a look at feuding, fall outs and rivalries in the movies.

Infighting between Prime Ministers and Chancellors has a storied history, harking back to the earliest days of the Parliamentary system in the UK.

We’ve had spats between Harold Wilson and Roy Jenkins, Mrs Thatcher and Howe/Lawson, May vs Hammond and of course the long-running Blair/Brown psychodrama.

The reported comity between Cameron/Osborne and Callaghan/Healey appears to be a relatively rare occurrence when it comes to the two most important offices of state in the British government.

As far as cinema goes, feuding between former allies/friends is an established trope, running from Biblical dramas (Noah, Exodus: Gods & Kings etc), Sword & Sandal epics (Ben Hur, Spartacus, Cleopatra), Tudor England (A Man for All Seasons, Elizabeth), the English Civil War (Cromwell, To Kill a King) and the Napoleonic era (The Duellists) to the present day (The Deal, Brexit: The Uncivil War).