On the final Monday of the election campaign, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, close friends and allies, had a quick coffee and swapped jokes on the station concourse at Euston before leaving on separate trains for tours of the Midlands. They would meet up again at an evening rally in Birmingham.

Then someone suggested that within a week they might, if the polls were right, be ministers rather than shadow spokesmen, enduring the frustrations of Opposition. They both paused, struck by the enormity of that prospect.

The polls were, of course, wrong, and both were for a time exhausted and depressed. But they soon bounced back, to support John Smith in his leadership campaign and to argue for further changes in Labour's policies and organisation if it was to win power.

Their victories in yesterday's elections to the national executive at the expense of Dennis Skinner, the standard bearer of the hard-left confirmed that they will be at the centre of the Labour party's changes over the next few years.

Mr Brown and Mr Blair, aged 41 and 39 respectively, are popularly linked as the inseparable twins of Labour's new generation. Unusually, this is not just media hype but reflects a genuine friendship. They talk frequently, developing their ideas together and ensuring that they do not clash, either in what they say or in standing against each other.

But they are very different personalities. Mr Brown often presents an austere image of the Scottish prophet prophesying doom as he delivers rapid-fire speeches in his deep voice. In private, he is witty and more subtle. Mr Blair is more a politician for the television age, generally smiling and appearing as the reasonable, human face of the Labour party.

Their friendship developed after they first entered the House of Commons at the 1983 general election. Both, on the soft or Tribunite left, recoiled from the excesses of Bennism and were willing supporters of Neil Kinnock's attempts to modernise the party.

One of their first parliamentary experiences was serving under Mr Smith on the party's team on the committee stage of a further instalment of the Tories' trade union legislation. This began close links between the two and Mr Smith.

Messrs Brown and Blair then gradually ascended the ladder as junior spokesmen, impressing by their assiduity and their ability to pick issues which attracted media interest. Mr Brown was elected to the shadow cabinet in 1987, followed a year later by Mr Blair.

Mr Brown and Mr Blair concentrated on economic issues and, as trade and industry and employment spokesmen respectively from 1989 until this summer, they played a large part in the far-reaching changes in the party's policies of that period, notably the shift in attitudes on public ownership and in relations with the trade unions. They also proved to effective performers on television, arousing the envy of some of their colleagues.

After the April election defeat, they jointly decided to back Mr Smith in the party's leadership election and, although some of their friends hoped one might stand for deputy, they were persuaded by him that Margaret Beckett should be a candidate. They were closely involved in pushing for a mass membership party and for the new theme of Labour as the attacker of vested interests. They have also helped Mr Smith this month in sticking to his pro-EC line and resisting calls for a referendum.

Yesterday's success in the national executive elections means that they are now not just Mr Smith's closest allies but also the leading candidates to succeed him.

So far they have avoided competing against each other, but they may at some stage have to decide which of them stands for the leadership.

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