Tubeview: The Special Relationship – how Tony Blair shafted Bill Clinton

With controversy over Tony Blair’s memoirs causing the former PM to go to ground there couldn’t be a better time for BBC Two to present the first UK screening of The Special Relationship, the third film in the trilogy (so far) following New Labour’s star player.

After The Deal and The Queen, this HBO/BBC Films co-production follows the emerging friendship, political bond and ultimately betrayal in the relationship between Blair (again portrayed with uncanny versimilitude by Michael Sheen) and Dennis Quaid’s Bill Clinton.

It’s a real bromance, with Blair in awe of Clinton during their first meeting, copping how to win a Labour election victory from Democrat strategists and standing by the US President when the Lewinsky scandal threatens to derail their whole centre-left political project.

Then the film shows the element of steel enter Blair’s personality when he decides that the West must use whatever force is required to end ethnic cleansing in Kosovo – and Clinton is going to help him.

With Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell, his foreign policy adviser in tow, Blair uses a trip to the States to “spin” the US media, forcing a reluctant Clinton, wounded by the Lewinsky affair, to commit to sending ground troops if required.

It’s a betrayal of their special relationship, with Blair becoming master, and Clinton, the master communicator, being out-played by his protege.

It’s clear from the new, almost religious glint in Blair’s eye, that this victory for humanitarian interventionism and Britain’s elevated role in world affairs, will have untold consequences a few years down the line.

The scenes between Quaid and Sheen are superbly played, Clinton towering over a nervous Blair when they first meet in the White House. Blair is prudish over the Lewinsky affair and Sheen can’t hide his character’s moral repulsion at the President’s activities.

Campbell and Powell find the finer details of Clinton’s infidelities amusing whilst Cherie asks for a clearer definition of sexual relations.

It’s a brisk 90-minute film but much time is given to the relationship between the first ladies and their men. Helen McCrory as Cherie is jealous of Hillary Clinton’s (Hope Davis) retinue of policy advisers and emerging political role.

When the Lewinsky scandal breaks, Davis immediately sees it as a right-wing challenge to her husband before being humiliated when he admits that yes, he did have an innapropriate relationship.

Like The Queen and The Deal, Peter Morgan brings to life the conversations that might have occurred when his two protagonists are left alone in a room.

But they aren’t pure dramatic intervention. This film uses Hillary Clinton’s memoirs as a source and Tony Blair’s own autobiography relates scenes from Morgan’s films, as if he used them as a guide.

So here Clinton really was asked in 1996 in the Oval Office by a journalist if he was meeting the next UK Prime Minister. “I just hope he is meeting the next President of the United States” Clinton joked in reply. Sadly Peter Riddell, the Times journalist who actually asked the question, is replaced by an American hack in the film.

And Clinton and Blair really did have a furious row over Kosovo, detailed in Blair’s book, over the PM’s attempts to manipulate the President via the media.

So does the emerging Cameron-Clegg relationship have any dramatic potential for Morgan, Beehive asked the writer at a screening of the new film? “Not at all.” Morgan’s not done with Blair yet. He wants a final chapter in which Blair turns into “the monster”, reflecting the anger of the protestors forcing him to lie low.

Sheen won’t commit yet but says Blair is “as much a mystery to himself as anyone else” and is likely to return for the Iraq chapter. George Bush makes an omious appearance at the end of The Special Relationship, which concludes with Clinton’s successor’s contested election victory.

The Special Relationship shows how personal relationships do matter at the top level of politics and the Clinton/Blair relationship makes for gripping drama. Surely Tony himself was watching on Saturday, if only to purloin some good lines for his next book.