Gordon Brown has put up some revealing archive films on the Downing Street website. If we had any illusions that we currently had a Labour Party prime minister ensconced in Downing Street, possessing even an inkling of labour sympathies, a brief look at his selection of noteworthy films should disillusion us:

First on the list (most recently posted) is Anthony Eden (Con.) trying to put a noble gloss on British involvement in Suez:

We have stepped in because the United Nations couldn't do so in time. If the United Nations will take over this police action, we shall welcome them... [but] until there are United Nations forces there, ready to take over, we and the French must go on with the job, until the job is done.

aha! A police action. And we stepped in, nobly, because the job needed doing and no-one else would do it.

(Gordon likes people who get on with the job, this is a constant refrain with him: 'My father and my mother taught me about family and the great virtues of hard work, doing your duty and always trying to do the right thing', he said to the Labour Party Conference in 2007. Presumably, when the job is bombing Iraq to dust, and when the United Nations again fail to step in, it is also up to the good old British to get the job done. And to go on with the job until the job is done)

Five (of the 10¹) archive films feature either meetings between British Prime Ministers and US Presidents, or visits to America:

• Macmillan (Con.) with Kennedy ('an encounter of importance for the continuing Anglo-American alliance'.)
• Stalin, Churchill (Con.) and Roosevelt in Yalta. Great Statesmen deciding the world's affairs. And Our Hero among them.
• Winston Churchill (Con.) on holiday in Florida. Mr Churchill, incidentally, attended a press conference 'during which he warned against too rapid a drift towards world collectivism'.
• Attlee (Lab.!) in the United States receiving a hearty welcome and then attending an Armistice Day ceremony with President Truman to 'honour the nation's heroic dead'
• Then we have yet another Churchill clip, a truly terrible one, where he barks in military style to his American audience (again!) that 'You Will Feel that We Are Yr Worthy Brothers In Arms, and You Will Know that We Shall Never Tire Nor Weaken, but March With You into any Quarter Of The World that May Be Necessary to Establish the Reign of Justice and of Law Among Men'.

And 3 films about Stanley Baldwin (Con.), in one of which he delivers a tirade against Mr Henderson's 'socialists' (the word explodes in his mouth), and in another of which he welcomes a lot of toffs in tweeds to Chequers who then ride off to kill a fox.

Oh - and Ramsay MacDonald (Lab., at last!) talking about financial stability and importance of the pound.

I think I begin to see a common thread - courage, pride, bravery, heroism, diligence, patriotism, false nobility, pomposity, grandiosity, self-importance, false humility. Getting on with the job. Fighting wars (because the United Nations won't do it). Great Leaders. America.

Our response [to 3 months of crisis] was calm and measured. We simply got on with the job. Britain has been tested and not found wanting. This is who we are. And there is no weakness in Britain today that cannot be overcome by the strengths of the British people. So don’t let anyone tell us Britain is not equal to every challenge...

I am proud to be British. I believe in British values... This is who I am. I am a conviction politician.

Gordon Brown, speech to the 'Labour' party (2007)

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1. The remaining films on the page were put up by Blair before he stepped down, and include extracts from the terrible Simon Schama series and an interview with Mrs Thatcher being concerned about genocide and Pol Pot.