BEFORE he was infamous, Tony Blair was considered a bit of a softie.

When he won the Labour leadership in 1994, he was 41 and his party’s youngest leader.

His fresh, wide-eyed features saw him nicknamed ‘Bambi’ in the contest.

He was too naive for the job, said critics. The Tories would flatten him. 

The Daily Mail ran the headline: “Where is the beef in Bambi? He’s young and he’s decent. But is there any evidence Tony Blair can run a party, let alone the country?”

But then John Major’s Tories collapsed into a self-made pit of sleaze, and Mr Blair wasn’t seen as a skittish lightweight anymore, but a potent threat. Out went Bambi and in came Beelzebub. 

Ahead of the 1997 election, the Conservatives stopped patronising the Labour leader and started demonising him. Literally. 

The Tories’ pet ad agency, M&C Saatchi, created the ‘demon eyes’ campaign.

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It showed a picture of a smiling Mr Blair with the strip containing his eyes torn away to reveal a pair of infernal red peepers beneath. Clearly, a great evil lurked therein.

“New Labour, New Danger,” ran the slogan. Party political broadcasts showed the same eyes peering out of a gap in a large pair of curtains, just like the ones they hang in hell.

It was wildly popular – among those who liked it. 

An ad industry magazine named it their campaign of the year, claiming it had hit a nerve about Mr Blair, as well as generating £5 million of publicity for a £125,000 outlay.

Voters, however, had other ideas. The campaign of the advert of the year didn’t cut it. 

The Tories lost more than half their seats in 1997. Labour won by a landslide.

Besides the tide of history flowing against Mr Major’s lot, the ad was also a bad fit for its target. For many electors, Mr Blair was still akin to Bambi. 

This was six years before Iraq. The image and the slogan didn’t gel. 

There’s an echo of that error in Labour’s new attack on Rishi Sunak.

“Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison?” asks an online ad with a picture of the PM. “Rishi Sunak doesn’t.”

It goes on: “Under the Tories, 4500 adults convicted of sexually assaulting children under 16 served no prison time”. Labour, says the ad, would “lock up dangerous child abusers”.

Released four weeks ahead of the English local elections and with an eye to the general election, it has caused a right old stink. It was meant to. 

Even if ‘demon eyes’ failed to stop Mr Blair, the controversy meant heightened publicity, and in that respect Labour’s ad has been successful, despite problems with...

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