Pig Suckler (1994)

D. Olaf Signussen
Colour
I’ve been trying to work out how big a deal Tony Blair was in Scandinavia in 1994. As this film, made the year Blair became leader of the Labour Party, features an actor who looks like a taller, blonder version of the man himself. Anders Lindqvist seems to have spent the rest of his career in Swedish television or theatre, but for one brief moment in 1994 he was able to capture the future British Prime Minister in a way which is so physical and so precise it’d give Michael Sheen nightmares. But how deliberate is this? Surely Blair at this point was just one of many overseas politicians who wouldn’t be that a big noise in another country. He didn’t even become leader of his party until halfway through the year. So unless this film was put in rapid development, to try and capture a hitherto obscure overseas politician for a domestic audience (which I admit, seems a tad unlikely), then this is a case of fate and karma playing deliciously weird games. As the politician at the centre of this film not only looks like Blair, he could actually be Blair.

The politician we have here is smiling and obsequious to a fault. We follow him on the campaign trail as he meets supporters, debates with opponents, shakes hands and kisses babies. Throughout he is smiling the kind of big grin which would make you think twice about any used car salesman you encountered, let alone a bloody politician. He has a glint in his eye as he wheedles and obfuscates, telling people what a good man he is and how trustworthy; while at the time telling them exactly what they want to hear with lashings of snake oil. He is forever telling the world what a righteous man he is, what a committed churchgoer he is, but he is forever compromising and bending the truth backwards and forwards and even wiggling it side to side. Whatever his loyalists want to believe, he tells them; whatever the more unconvinced need him to do, he will do. Of course, he frequently tells one person X and another person Y, and the two things are mutually exclusive, but that doesn’t matter as he is one of life’s good guys and you can trust his word and he is someone you can rely on. As the campaign goes on, he demonstrates this incredible need to win, to get himself to a position of power.

Of course the title gives away where all this is going to end up, and that does mitigate against the shock somewhat. But it’s fascinating to watch the process whereby this Tony Blair figure glides by on his charm, states again and again how good a man he is and what a successful leader he will be, and in the face of cynicism performs this incredible demonstration of how far he’ll go to get the voters’ support. As this film ends with the lead character’s shirt undone and a piglet attached to his male nipple, but he still keeps grinning and talking and trying to tell the world what a good and trustworthy guy he is. He doesn’t actually say “pretty straight sort of guy”, but it’s close enough to send a shiver down the spine of anyone alive in Britain from 1997 onwards.

Tony apparently liked ‘The Queen’, I wonder if he ever saw this?