If I were advising the leader of the opposition, Kemi Badenoch, on how to make the most of the prime minister’s present discomfiture – and heaven knows she needs to take advice – I’d refer her to one of Tony Blair’s most memorable exchanges when he was doing her job 30 years ago. Yes, it really is that long.
Just as Keir Starmer is having trouble with his backbenchers now, so too was poor old John Major back then – over Europe, naturally. Blair bossed the prime minister by leaning across the despatch box with a nasty-looking sneer across his face and declared, with great theatrical skill and maximum disdain: “There is one very big difference – I lead my party, he follows his.”
