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On the night of his 1994 Labour leadership summit at Granita with Tony Blair, Gordon Brown rushed back to his team HQ and tucked hungrily into steak and chips.
Not only were both men too busy talking to eat much, but the food on that swanky Islington menu had been far from Brown’s usual fare. ‘What exactly is polenta?’ he grumbled to aide Ed Balls.
It’s a revealing anecdote, both personally and politically. But you won’t have heard it on Blair & Brown: The New Labour Revolution (BBC2).
Both Blair and Brown contribute detailed accounts to this five-part history though, as the Queen might say, recollections may vary
This was the agreement, Brown says: ‘He would be leader and serve till near the end of a second term. It was simple and straightforward and I am surprised it is misunderstood.’
The Granita meeting, crucial though many believe it to be, wasn’t even mentioned. Instead, the story is told in Ed’s memoir Appetite, serialised earlier this year in the Mail’s Weekend Magazine.
Both Blair and Brown contribute detailed accounts to this five-part history though, as the Queen might say, recollections may vary.
This was the agreement, Brown says: ‘He would be leader and serve till near the end of a second term.
'It was simple and straightforward and I am surprised it is misunderstood.’
In another soundbite, he growled, ‘It could have been me.’
Blair, who clung on like a limpet and fought three elections as Prime Minister, to the increasing fury of his Chancellor, says vaguely: ‘Yes, it was always envisaged that he would succeed me.’
The Machiavellian Peter Mandelson, on the other hand, suggests they were a triumvirate, ‘a trio of musketeers’.
Brown is the most competitive in his memories. ‘I met Bill Clinton some years before, actually before Tony
