ABSTRACT
The relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, which dominated British politics between 1997 and 2010, was dogged by two major misunderstandings. The first was created by the protagonists themselves at a meeting before the party’s 1994 leadership election. The second misunderstanding affected media pundits and Labour supporters who were not close associates of either Brown or Blair. This chapter explores differences between the foreign policy outlooks of Blair and Brown. The coalition Prime Minister, David Cameron, had actually claimed the mantle of ‘heir to Blair’ in an unguarded conversation with journalists before winning the Conservative leadership in 2005. The chances of New Labour maintaining its winning electoral streak would have been enhanced if Brown had used his belated accession as an opportunity to make a quick and clean break from his predecessor’s foreign-policy commitments.
