The venue’s unveiling, now recognised as The O2 Arena, represented one of Blair’s flagship initiatives, despite being originally announced by his predecessor John Major.
The Queen and Prince Philip were present at the occasion with Princess Anne and her husband Sir Timothy Laurence.
Former Labour press secretary Alastair Campbell observed “that the royal party were clearly ‘p****d off to be there'” in his diary.
According to Valentine Low, author of Power and the Palace: The Inside Story of the Monarchy and 10 Downing Street, the photograph of the Queen clasping hands with Blair during Auld Lang Syne from that evening stands as the Royal Family’s “most excruciating” image.
Speaking on the Daily Mail’s Palace Confidential podcast, he said: “It’s one of the most excruciating pictures of the Royal Family there are, the look on the Queen’s face, the awkwardness on Blair’s face.
“But the thing about that is that it was in the programme, everyone knew Auld Lang Syne would be sung at the end of the evening. But it got to the moment and Blair thought to himself, ‘Oh God, what do I do now?'”.
“He’s dealing with this quandary when it’s actually the Queen who raises her hands. There’s this myth that’s built up that he grabbed the Queen’s hand but, no, it’s the Queen who realised there should be some hand-holding going on.”
Low highlights that the Queen is the sole person in the photograph not crossing her arms for the customary New Year’s dance.
The former Prime Minister allegedly concluded the evening by telling his wife he was relieved a millennium “only comes once every thousand years”.
According to Tina Brown, author of The Palace Papers, neither the Queen nor the Duke of Edinburgh were particularly taken with the festivities.
She suggests they would have much rather marked New Year’s Eve 1999 in the comfort of their own home.
Speaking to the Express in 2023, she revealed: “Normally, she would have been in Norfolk surrounded by family and friends for her annual New Year’s Eve celebration at Sandringham House. Instead, on the night of the 31 December 1999, she had gone to bed at Windsor Castle distinctly disgruntled.”
Brown claims the Queen and Philip were already weary when they arrived at Greenwich by boat.
They were then confronted by “rows and rows of empty seats” as security hold-ups delayed numerous distinguished guests. In Power and Responsibility, the third volume of his distinctive memoir detailing life at the heart of the Blair administration, Campbell revealed the Duke of Edinburgh described the occasion as “brilliant” but acknowledged his body language told a different story.
He penned: “The Queen did kiss Philip and took his and TB’s hands [with obvious freezing reluctance, the press noted] for ‘Auld Lyne Sang’, but they did not look comfortable with the whole thing. TB claimed Philip said to him it was ‘brilliant’, but his body language did not radiate in that direction.”