It is now clear that the most important event of the 2005 general election took place before campaigning formally started, when Downing Street aides travelled to Scotland to broker a deal between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown over the Easter weekend. The settlement was reached on the Chancellor’s terms, as Wednesday’s Labour election manifesto suggested. Tony Blair has published three manifestos since 1997. This is the first in which the cover has not shown an exclusive picture of the Prime Minister. This year he is presented more as a member of a team.
The second result of the Easter Concordat was the emotionally harrowing party political broadcast shown to television viewers on Monday night. It was hard to watch the film of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair working happily together, made by the Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella, without coming over ill. Minghella’s film was a fraud on the British public, and its claim that the relationship between the two men could be compared to a ‘marriage’ was an offence under the Trade Descriptions Act.
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