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.
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