Have you seen the episode of The Simpsons in which Bart, Milhouse Van Houten and Martin Prince pool their hard-earned pocket-money in order to purchase a rare comic book? Although I haven’t seen said instalment in aeons, recent idle musings on the subject of the forthcoming Blair-Brown handover made me think of it. Here’s why.

The basic lesson to be derived from the boys’ interaction is that their inability to share cost them the comic they held so dear. Petty squabbles, latent mistrust and all-out paranoia conspired to tear their alliance asunder, and the comic was eventually destroyed altogether with none of them able to enjoy ownership thereof. Now, it may seem like a large intuitive leap from the fictional escapades of three yellow-skinned adolescents to the impending change in this country’s leadership, but I believe the analogy remains apt nonetheless. Gordon Brown was one of the chief architects of the ‘New Labour’ brand, along with Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell; he has long been rumoured as the man who would eventually take over the project’s reins, achieving his lifelong goal of becoming Prime Minister in the process, and yet – on occasion – the coming-about of this promotion has seemed far from assured.

Now, however, it is all but set in stone. On June 27, 2007, Blair will go to Buckingham Palace in order to tender his resignation before the Queen. This announcement, made on May 10, has precipitated what may, in other circumstances, be described as a ‘leadership race’ within New Labour, but at present it only contains one horse of any real note: Brown himself. Few genuine challengers have emerged, and even those who dared to dip their toes into the proverbial water – such as David Miliband, the young upstart Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – have been persuaded to step back and bide their time.

As a result, it’s all but certain that Gordon Brown will be the next New Labour leader and, by default, Britain’s next Prime Minister. Blair, it seems, will make good on his long-gestating promise to hand control over to his arch-nemesis, but what kind of victory does this really represent for Brown? In this author’s opinion, pyrrhic in the extreme.

See, back in 1997, New Labour actually seemed… well, new. We’d had more than enough of the Tories after eighteen long years, with Margaret Thatcher’s soulless rhetoric, Michael Heseltine’s relentless duplicity and John Major’s greyer-than-grey insipidity. When Blair came along with his Cheshire Cat grin and his Fender Stratocaster guitar, we welcomed him with open arms. Ten years later, however, the New Labour ship which swept home so decisively in ’97 is a battered, foundering vessel. The war in Iraq, a decade of sleaze and corruption, endless kowtowing to George ‘Dubya’ Bush and failure after failure have taken their collective toll. Blair has, in short, comprehensively poisoned the New Labour chalice before handing it over to Brown.

So where does this leave the nascent PM Gordon? As a stop-gap solution for both Britain and his party, that’s where. In 2009, another nationwide election will be called and the smart money is on Brown’s tenure in 10 Downing Street coming to an abrupt end. David Cameron, the new Tory leader, is a Blairite triumph of style over substance and, while we like to think we’ve learned our lesson from a decade of supercilious smugness courtesy of our soon-to-be-former leader, my guess is that the voters of this country will once again be seduced by the flashy superficiality Cameron represents. It’s ironic, really: in 1997 Blair managed to wrest control of the nation from the Tories by stealing their policies and voters, and in 2009 the Conservatives will, more likely than not, regain power by appropriating the very culture of spin fostered by Blair and Campbell. Brown will then be deposed as New Labour’s leader, leaving his successor to lead the party towards 2013. From then onwards? Que sera, sera.

Which brings us nicely back to our jaundiced friends in Springfield. Blair and Brown formed an uneasy alliance in order to purchase the notional comic book that is this nation’s management, and their inability to curtail their mutual antagonism has all but destroyed it. Brown will soon inherit the tattered shreds, on which pictures and printing are still vaguely visible, but it’s only a matter of time before the metaphorical tome disintegrates altogether. And then? Well, then we, as British citizens, will have a whole new set of problems with which to concern ourselves. In some ways, it matters not, as the New Labour brand – much like The Simpsons itself – hasn’t been well-regarded for many years now.

Still, to borrow a phrase, things can only get better. Perhaps, after ten years of Blair’s ostentatious showboating, Brown’s dour leadership style is just what this country needs; only in time will we know for sure, and at present we must wait and see what transpires.

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