Tony Blair at Chequers.
Photograph: Suki Dhanda
Tony Blair posed for this portrait in the drawing room at Chequers last Thursday. "This is a crucial year for me," he told the Observer. But what do his clothes, stance and surroundings say about the PM and the way he sees himself, asks Laura Barton.
Cup and saucer
Once, Tony made a point of supping from mugs like the rest of us. Now it's all cup and saucer lah-di-dah behaviour. My, how times have changed. Our respect for him will only be rekindled if he can prove live on TV that he slurps from the saucer.
Modernity and grandeur
White carpet is more often associated with precious diva types such as Mariah Carey and Jennifer Lopez, but here it carries a whiff of modernity and minimalism in a room otherwise rendered quite bilious with chintz, tasselled sofas and pleated lampshades. The last time you saw this type of interior decor was in, what, 1984? By contrast, Tony, in his hipster gear and time-traveller pose, looks so brain-frazzlingly modern that he seems to have been teleported into the scene for a prime-time ITV drama. At a subconscious level, he is reminding us that it was he, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, who rescued this country from frou-frou furnishings and made it into the kind of great nation where everyone had access to chrome kitchen fittings. With a simple white carpet and some floral cushions, Blair wrestles the crown of King Moderniser back from that ruddy David Cameron.
Ball-crushing drainpipe trousers
"The trousers are too tight," notes GQ's Charlie Porter, with lavish understatement. "It either means he has a different impression of his body to reality, or he's been sucked into the skinny jeans thing." Yes, surprisingly, the prime minister's tapered trousers, not to mention his tucked-in shirt and belt, are very hip, but the effect is rather disturbing when worn by the premier. "It's that little finger I'm worried about," says Porter. "He probably can't fit it into his pocket because it's too tight, but it does appear to be pointing to and highlighting a certain area."
The stance
Here the prime minister is striking a pose commonly known as Freeman's catalogue 1983. The only thing restraining him from looking at his watch and pointing into the middle distance is the fact that his fingers are hooked over his belt and squished into his pocket, in a manoeuvre delicately poised halfway between George W Bush and Brokeback Mountain. In 2004, researchers at the Boltzmann Institute for Urban Ethology at Vienna University in Austria and Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, claimed that men on the prowl will "stand or sit with their legs wide apart and their hands on their hips". It's a pose that purrs: I've still got it, baby/voters.
The silver-foxification
For a while, Blair dilly-dallied with the Grecian 2000, and, quite rightly, we mocked him for it. Now he is allowing the grey to make a stealthy return. This is a savvy move: there is something too Lego-man about David Cameron's shiny black barnet, and the prime minister's new look suggests the wisdom of his years. However, the most obvious reference point here is housewives' favourite Anthony Head. Who would you vote for: the twinkly-eyed, coffee-brewing silver fox next door, or the man with the detachable hair?
Purple shirt
Purple is a colour associated with royalty and consequently smacks of power, nobility, luxury and ambition. Since the heyday of the goths, the colour has also been associated with creativity, mystery and magic, not to mention goth-rockers Fields of the Nephilim. Furthermore, according to the software tool Color Wheel Pro, almost 75% of pre-adolescent children prefer purple to all other colours. Sadly, children cannot vote. It is the cut that most arrests Charlie Porter, associate editor of GQ. "There's no particular purpose to anything; like, why has the shirt got a breast pocket? Why is it unbuttoned by two buttons? Why such billowy sleeves with such a tight cuff?" The effect, he says, is that Mr Blair appears as barrel-chested as a pirate. "And the purple silk looks really cheap, really Northamptonshire grandmother."
