A quarter of a century ago, I played centre-midfield for Demon Eyes – arguably Britain’s most remarkable amateur football team. It was less a sports squad than a cabinet-in-waiting, founded by smart young staffers working for Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and other senior ministers in what was then Britain’s New Labour government.
In the 2001/02, from from our home ground on Market Road, close to Kings Cross in Central London, Demon Eyes won the tough Thames amateur league. Market Road was an awful place to play football back in those days – the artificial pitches were as hard as concrete, with much of the astro turf worn away. Badly scuffed knees and thighs were almost obligatory, broken bones far too common.
The Demon Eyes team featured centre-backs David Miliband and James Purnell – then senior aides to Blair, who went on to become Foreign Secretary in 2007 and Work and Pensions Secretary in 2008 respectively. Ed Balls (then Brown’s main advisor, also in the cabinet within six years of that 2001 season) played upfront. Tim Allan – another Blair-era Downing Street aide – was on the wing.
Demon Eyes comprised not just high-ranking political advisors, but well-connected supporters in the arts and the broader quangocracy. As a Financial Times political reporter, I’d played in a press side against them – and was recruited, I suppose, mostly for my footballing skills.
So why am I recalling all this? Because centre-forward for Demon Eyes, often turning out in non-regulation shorts and odd socks, was a floppy-haired Andy Burnham.
Burnham entered the cabinet in 2007 as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, among the first of his ex-teammates to do so, before becoming Health Secretary and then Greater Manchester Mayor. And now it looks as if he will beat all of the Demon Eyes squad to the top job.
He is expected to enter Number Ten as Prime Minister on 17th July – in just three weeks’ time. But I wouldn’t be surprised if quite a few of other Demon Eyes players were, in some shape or form, brought into this incoming Labour government.
