A wave of TikTok videos revisiting the New Labour era, particularly the rivalry between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, has gone viral among teenagers who were not yet born when the government came to power in 1997. The clips, often set to current pop songs by artists such as Chappell Roan and Charli xcx, splice together archival footage and quotes from books like Andrew Rawnsley’s The End of the Party.
Creators, many of whom are A-level politics students aged 17 to 21, say they are drawn to the “complex human relationships” within the Blair-Brown-Mandelson-Campbell circle. Ellen, an 18-year-old who runs the account @politicsprincess, told the Guardian: “I just became completely fascinated and obsessed with these people.” Her most popular edit, pairing 1997 Labour campaign clips with Justin Bieber and Nicki Minaj’s Beauty and the Beat, has garnered 130,000 views.
Dr Lucy Bennett, a media lecturer at Cardiff University, said the trend shows how “political messaging is being increasingly processed through fan remix culture”. The phenomenon, sometimes called “lolitics”, has previously included the “Milifandom” of Ed Miliband in the early 2010s. Political figures have taken note: Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart have played TikTok edits of themselves during live shows of their podcast The Rest Is Politics.
Charlie, another creator whose posts have received over 1 million likes, said the podcast was her gateway into studying New Labour history. She added that a “slight nostalgia” for the era is common in the community, noting “the contrast of what came before and after makes it seem like one of our better periods of government”.
