Gordon Brown: Prime Minister

Martin O’Neill, who would himself be elected to parliament in 1979, called Brown with an offer. O’Neill was chairman of the Labour Party in Leith, and he explained, ‘There isn’t a strong candidate here, and you could win a safe seat.’ Brown hesitated. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I don’t think I can let the people in Edinburgh down.’ He expressed his fear of bad publicity after his failure to stand in Hamilton, and the probability of being tarred as an opportunist. The impression again was of indecision and fear of a competition whose outcome was, despite O’Neill’s assurances, uncertain. He sought refuge in hard work.

The first battle was to persuade the Scottish people to support devolution in the forthcoming referendum. Without uttering any overtly nationalist sentiments, he campaigned in favour of the ‘yes’ vote, speaking at dozens of meetings. Despite campaigning in the midst of widespread strikes, Brown believed he could deliver victory. Scotland, he argued, did not share England’s disenchantment with the Callaghan government. Fighting against the odds brought the best out of him. During one debate against Tam Dalyell in York Place, Edinburgh, Brown arrived after a last-minute invitation. ‘He stood up to me better than anyone else,’ Dalyell told a friend afterwards. ‘I was pretty formidable, but he had thought about it better than anyone I had met.’ Among his other opponents was Robin Cook, praised by some but damned by more, especially the former Labour MP Jim Sillars, who would later join the SNP: ‘Cook believed that he was intellectually superior to God.’ Dalyell watched the two sparring with each other. ‘They were two strong young men who knew that one of them would get in the way.’

On election day, 1 March 1979, Scotland’s airports were closed and there were food shortages. Productivity had fallen since 1974, annual wage increases were about 15 per cent and inflation was 15.5 per cent. The ‘yes’ and ‘no’ votes were evenly divided, but under the rules of the referendum the ‘yes’ vote could only be successful if it received not just a simple majority, but a majority of all those who were entitled to vote. Brown, like many in his party, deluded himself about the reasons for failure. Scotland’s new oil wealth had encouraged the belief that while England was dying, their country was being revitalised. Scottish voters, Brown failed to understand, were disenchanted by Labour. He was nevertheless optimistic about victory in the general election, which was finally called for May 1979.

Energetically he began campaigning in Edinburgh South against Michael Ancram, the Conservative candidate. His speeches were notable for their use of repetition as an oratorical strategy, and for their tidal wave of minutiae. Watching Brown’s campaign, Alf Young spotted its flaws: ‘He was always surrounded by a blitz of paper and a million bullet points. He exuded the belief that everything could be reduced to micro-targets and micro-meddling.’ His campaign ignored the widespread disgust with the strikers, and specifically rejected any increased control over trade unions, especially over picketing and unofficial strikes. Despite dozens of friends and supporters, including Margarita, working on his behalf, Brown was defeated by 2,460 votes. Later, in the party headquarters with a group including Robin Cook and Nigel Griffiths, a local activist, he confessed his devastation. Politically, Margaret Thatcher’s victory with a majority of forty-three seats was shattering. Brown was baffled by the national mood and the unexpected end of the Labour era.

The following morning, while television pictures showed Thatcher standing on the steps of 10 Downing Street quoting Francis of Assisi, Brown was slumped in a tattered armchair in Marchmont Road, surrounded by the debris of his campaign, contemplating his life until the next election. He had made a terrible mistake in refusing Martin O’Neill’s offer of a safe seat. No one congratulated him for fighting and losing. He would continue lecturing at the Glasgow College of Technology and the WEA, and would secure a junior researcher’s job on Ways and Means, a political programme produced by Scottish Television. After some complaints about the lack of political balance in his contributions he was moved to What’s Your Problem?, a weekly consumer programme exposing ripoffs by shops and local authorities. His productions were renowned less for their artistic qualities than for the efforts he took to rectify ills.

His new companion was a feisty former student at Edinburgh University, Sheena McDonald, born in Dunfermline, Fife. A brief introduction at one of his university parties by his brother Andrew had been remembered when they met again while working at Scottish Television. Dark, intelligent and fun, McDonald bore some physical resemblance to Margarita, but their characters differed sharply. She was an ambitious journalist, and prized her personal independence. Unlike Margarita, she had no intention of marrying Brown, although they had much in common. Like Brown, she was a child of the manse; her father was a former moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

Brown’s attitude towards women had become entrenched. He knew he was attractive. He was well built – ‘fit, with good legs’ as one admirer recalled – but he denied to himself any need to share his life with a woman, or to trust anyone beyond his immediate confidants: his two brothers, Wilf Stevenson and Murray Elder. At the end of a day he was content to go home, endlessly watch games of football on television and listen to recordings by Jessye Norman or Frank Sinatra. He was neither interested in a woman’s life nor prepared to divulge his own secrets. Confessing to any doubts or exposing his weaknesses was anathema. Nothing would be allowed to undermine his determination to portray himself as supremely self-confident. His relationship with Sheena McDonald, like his job, was temporary while he found a safe seat. The obstacles to that, however, appeared to be multiplying.

The Labour Party in England was convulsed by defeat. In the leadership elections after Jim Callaghan resigned, the left-wing Michael Foot defeated Denis Healey by 139 votes to 129. The parliamentary Labour Party had patently misread the electoral result. Rather than distancing themselves from the wild antics of the militant trade unions, a majority of Labour MPs sought to encourage them. The growing split in the English party between sympathisers of the neo-Marxist Militant Tendency and the traditional socialists only partially infected the Scottish party, but Brown’s comrades nevertheless were embroiled in bitter disagreements about personalities and ideology. ‘Anyone who can survive that viciousness,’ sighed Jimmy Allison, ‘can survive anything.’ In that battle Brown represented the traditional Tribunites on the party’s executive, the ethical socialist rather than the Marxist. He faced hard-liners including George Galloway, the son of Irish immigrants, and Bill Speirs, a future general secretary of the Scottish TUC. For hours every week they battled about the transfer of power to left-wing activists, and whether Tony Benn and the left’s caucus should be supported despite Benn’s refusal to accept collective responsibility. Resisting any dalliance with those outside the mainstream, Brown argued against factionalism and declined invitations by Galloway and Speirs to join their group in the pub after meetings. He would insist that he was engaged in intellectual rather than malicious, personalised debates, and preferred to talk with the trade unionists. Both Galloway and Speirs, he believed, were blocking his promotion and influence. They would deny any subterfuge, although neither was particularly fond of Brown. In Galloway’s opinion he was an egghead, a brainy backroom boy and a workaholic policy wonk, but not an intellectual. Galloway believed him to be ambitiously manoeuvring to build relationships for his own personal advancement, rather than trying to build a better society. ‘He’s chosen not to be a comrade,’ agreed Speirs.

Their disagreements mirrored the sectarian division within the Scottish Labour Party. Galloway, a Catholic from the west coast, did not warm to Brown’s east coast Presbyterianism. He was scathing about Brown’s silences at the late-night meetings held by Alex Murray, a famed Scottish trade unionist in Ayrshire, at which Brown refrained from engaging in the debates. He was also irritated that Brown, despite being steeped in the history of the Labour movement, appeared to be motivated by instinctive beliefs rather than philosophy. Not an original thinker, concluded Galloway, nor a man who had suffered grinding poverty. As Galloway fondly repeated, the divisions within the Scottish Labour Party ran deep, and as with all divisions within a family, the disagreements were aggravated by personality differences. Brown’s idiosyncrasies could be particularly aggravating. While chairing the party’s Scottish Council, he would pull bits of paper out of his bulging plastic bag, say, ‘See, this is how we deliver,’ and list twenty points.

The disagreements intensified in 1980. In England, the Militant Tendency and the Bennites were emasculating the Labour Party. In Scotland, by contrast, the party was divided over unilateral disarmament and withdrawal from NATO, but remained united as a coherent group, despite outbursts of ill-discipline. The rows irritated Brown. At a meeting on 14 November 1981 he was disturbed that Galloway, representing the hard left, berated Michael Foot for not supporting Tony Benn against Denis Healey in the election for deputy leader. Brown had attached himself to the soft-left, Neil Kinnock tendency, advocating a ‘moral crusade’ to rebuild Labour’s appeal to voters. His personal response to the warfare was ‘One Person, One Vote’, a lacklustre pamphlet attacking the trade unions’ undemocratic use of the block vote to wield influence. All his other ideas had been rejected by the electorate. His support for John Silkin, a forlorn London lawyer, as deputy leader confirmed his own isolation from the realities in London. With a general election expected within two years, he still faced huge hurdles if he was to find a safe parliamentary seat. New hopes rested on his election in 1982 as the Scottish party’s vice-chairman and on a journalistic scoop – publishing an internal document of Britoil, an oil company operating in the North Sea which was on the verge of privatisation. The ‘strictly confidential’ document showed that the company’s profits would not grow for five years. The scoop, he hoped, would discourage private investors from buying Britoil shares from the government, but he was to be disappointed by the response. Despite his high profile and his loyal efforts for the party, he still sensed that he suffered handicaps. He sought advice from Jimmy Allison. ‘Get your nose in with the unions,’ Allison advised, adding that he would need to neutralise the opposition of the communists, who possessed sufficient influence in the Scottish Labour Party to veto any aspirant.

The most approachable trade unionist was Jimmy McIntyre, a popular leader of the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU). McIntyre was concerned that in television interviews, compared to their employers, his members made fools of themselves. Brown agreed to organise a media course for Scottish shop stewards, using role playing – ‘You’re on strike, what do you tell media?’ In return, he expected McIntyre to help him gain selection for a safe seat. He also sought advice from Robin Cook. At a meal in a Chinese restaurant in Soho arranged by Murray Elder, Brown asked Cook for help. ‘I am sure you will do very well, Gordon,’ Cook replied. Brown repeated his request and, he told his authorised biographer Paul Routledge, received the same non-committal reply. They did however agree to co-author a book. Scotland: The Real Divide, a collection of essays about poverty, would be published the following year.

The pace of Brown’s life remained frenetic. His relationship with Sheena McDonald had ended and he was seeing Marion Caldwell, a dark, good-looking lawyer born in Glasgow. They had met in 1981. Since neither wanted to sacrifice their professional career, there was an understanding that they would meet whenever he was minded. Their relationship was not exclusive. At the same time, Brown was also meeting Carol Craig, a publicist who would live with the journalist Alf Young. Off-hand relationships precisely matched Brown’s requirements. He was thirty years old. He had waited six years for a parliamentary seat. His impatience was explosive. Margaret Thatcher’s unpopularity, he calculated, would secure a Labour victory at the next election.

Over the previous months he had forged relationships in his native Fife. Helped by Tom Donald, a local journalist, and Jimmy McIntyre, he had taught politics at weekend schools for trade unionists and participated in their discussions, even mouthing support for Bennite co-operatives and nationalisation. ‘I don’t want any more pudding heads as MPs,’ McIntyre had reassuringly told Brown. ‘We don’t need any more ill-disciplined big drinkers in the Commons. We need clever, media-savvy types.’ Brown was his man. ‘Spend every evening at meetings,’ McIntyre advised him. That advice was endorsed by Alec Falconer, the TGWU’s shop steward at the Rosyth shipyards. When the opportunity arose, Brown was promised, the clan would beat off his rival contestants.

Having secured the support of the trade union officials, Brownneeded to win over two kingmakers. First, Hugh Wyper, a leader of the local Communist Party, was approached. George Galloway says that he was consulted by Wyper and, despite his reservations, urged that the communists support Brown because the trade unions needed his brainpower. Wyper gave his approval. Second was Alec Kitson, the deputy general secretary of the TGWU at its headquarters in London and a communist sympathiser, albeit a member of the Labour Party. He agreed that Brown was a suitable candidate. Having secured that support, Brown waited for an opportunity.

In 1983 Dunfermline East, a safe Labour seat near Edinburgh, was looking for a candidate. Known locally as ‘Little Moscow’, the old coalmining area had been represented from 1935 to 1950 by Willie Gallacher, a communist MP. Both the communists and the TGWU agreed that Brown, the Scottish Labour Party chairman that year, was ideal. All other challengers were rebuffed and the selection was predetermined. Nervously, Brown travelled with Jonathan Wills from Edinburgh to make his speech to the party committee in Cowdenbeath. David Stoddart, the constituency agent, was primed to favour Brown. Like any prospective candidate, Brown promised the committee, if selected, to be active, to care for the constituency’s children, pensioners and the poor, and to fight for the destruction of the hated Tory regime. Soon after his speech, the machine delivered him the guaranteed seat in Westminster.

That summer, during the Edinburgh Festival, John Reid, who was then working for Neil Kinnock, was drinking in a pub with Roy Hattersley, a member of the Labour shadow cabinet. ‘You should meet Gordon Brown,’ Reid told Hattersley. ‘He’s a young man who’s bound to be leader of the party one day.’ Hattersley, a traditional socialist, made a note of this newcomer who shared his dislike of the Bennite extremists but supported public control of the economy and a planned economy. He and Brown also shared a disgust that Roy Jenkins, the idol of many in the party, had won a parliamentary seat at a by-election in Glasgow Hillhead in 1982 for the new SDP, a breakaway party led by the ‘gang of four’ former Labour cabinet ministers – Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen and Bill Rodgers.

Brown had immersed himself in the politics of that by-election while employed as a researcher for a television documentary. He regarded Jenkins as a traitor, and could not understand why the split had occurred. Like many party activists, he remained oblivious to the public’s anger about strikes by public sector workers. He was convinced that the increase in unemployment under Margaret Thatcher to more than three million and her cuts in public spending would persuade the voters to return to Labour. He discounted the Tories’ appeal to the middle classes, the fact that inflation had fallen from 20 per cent to 4 per cent, and their pledge to control the unions by introducing secret ballots before strikes and removing the protection of union funds from civil litigation. The evidence of his political blindness was displayed in Scotland: The Real Divide, the book he co-authored with Robin Cook. Both damned Thatcher’s analysis of Britain’s economic weaknesses, and extolled the virtues of Clement Attlee’s postwar legacy.

In common with many party stalwarts, Brown regarded Attlee’s nationalisation of industry, the creation of the NHS and his education reforms as a historic benchmark. He ignored the food rationing, industrial stagnation and economic incompetence which eroded Labour’s popularity before the 1950 and 1951 general elections, excluding the party from office for thirteen years. In Brown’s judgement, Attlee’s glory was the destruction of the barriers to equality and social justice. Those landmark successes, he lamented, were being reversed by the Thatcherite assumption that inequality was permanent. To restore Attlee’s legacy, he urged the redistribution of wealth. The top 10 per cent of the population, who, he claimed, owned ‘80 per cent of our wealth and 30 per cent of our income even after tax’, should suffer higher taxes while the disadvantaged received a guaranteed minimum wage, higher state benefits and more public spending. He opposed the proposed privatisation of the utilities, British Telecom and British Airways. Enterprise, in Brown’s opinion, meant state initiatives or personal work as approved and aided by the government. Prices, incomes and wages, he believed, should be fixed by statute. He supported subsidies to dying industries and opposed legislation to end overmanning and restrictive practices in the docks and industry. He mocked the chancellor Nigel Lawson’s ‘Medium Term Financial Strategy’, which intended to abandon short-termism and create a climate for long-term economic growth without inflation. Until the socialist society was built, Brown confidently predicted in his new book, ‘the era of automatic growth is not only over but unlikely to return in the near future’.

Brown was proud of the book, and looked forward to the launch organised by Bill Campbell, a university friend and the publisher, at a press conference in Edinburgh. As usual, Brown was late. Cook, the local MP, did not wait for him, but launched into a speech suggesting to the audience that he was the sole author. Rushing into the room, Brown discovered that Cook had stolen the limelight. His fury towards Cook that day, some would say, caused the permanent breach between the two. That is unlikely. The grudge was older than that. Cook’s insensitivity was just the latest instance of his ungenerous nature. Besides their many disagreements at Edinburgh University and in committee meetings, not least over devolution, Brown was angry that Cook had refused to endorse his campaign for chairmanship of the Scottish Labour Party or to help him find a parliamentary seat. The image of Cook drinking whisky alone at the Abbotsford bar was that of a man who was simply disliked. Brown suspected, probably correctly, that Cook was unwilling to help a potential rival, and his fury never abated.

The general election was called for 9 June 1983. Britain’s recent military victory in the Falkland Islands overshadowed the domestic recession. The sharp rise in unemployment, from one million to three million, caused by the Tory squeeze on manufacturing and the public services encouraged Labour to hope for support from disillusioned Tory supporters. But Labour’s Achilles heel was its manifesto. Michael Foot’s promise of renationalisation, the reintroduction of controls and the withdrawal of Britain from the EU, damned by shadow cabinet member Gerald Kaufman as ‘the longest suicide note in history’, destroyed the party’s electoral chances.

Brown, however, had good reason for elation. He won his seat by a 11,301 majority, gaining 51.5 per cent of the vote. His ambition to enter parliament was finally realised. After delivering a rousing acceptance speech at Lochgelly town hall he was driven to the home of David Stoddart, his agent. Grouped around the television, he and his supporters watched the results from around the country. Jonathan Wills, Brown’s old friend, arrived shortly after. ‘Gordon, well done,’ shouted Wills as he entered the dark room, expecting a jubilant celebration party. ‘There’s a beer over there,’ snapped Brown. ‘Sit down and shut up.’ Wills obeyed. ‘I’ve never seen anyone as depressed in my life,’ he said later.

Gloom came easily to Brown. Some blamed his Presbyterian puritanism, but others identified a more profound trait. His misery reflected his remoteness. He had not understood the electoral plight of socialism. He was perplexed that his hatred for the Tories was not shared by everyone. The Scottish socialist was isolated from the mainstream of English political thought. To his credit, he resolved before travelling to Westminster to avoid the ‘Scottish trap’, making a deliberate effort not to be identified as predominantly concerned with Scottish issues. He would be a national rather than a regional politician. The star of Kirkcaldy and Edinburgh University expected to shine as a star in the capital.

TWO Metamorphosis

Gordon Brown’s first impression of Westminster was of Bedlam. Bellowing, triumphant Tories boasting a 144 majority pushed past the dejected remnants of the Labour Party. Dressed in sharp suits, gleaming shirts and polished shoes, the swaggering representatives of the establishment reinforced Brown’s belief in society’s inequities and his commitment to the disadvantaged. His election victory had brought clarity into his life. There was a noticeable self-assuredness during his first days in the Palace of Westminster. His intellect and surviving a decade of political turmoil in Scotland protected him from the nervous breakdown affecting others in the party. While they behaved feverishly, he sensibly focused on establishing his presence with political journalists, positioning himself as a Tribunite, and supporting Neil Kinnock against Roy Hattersley in the leadership election. He preferred the Welshman’s left-wing, anti-European policies. Like most of his tribe, he was resolved to reimpose socialism. Even the collapse of the socialist experiment in France just eighteen months after President Mitterrand’s election was not absorbed as a portent.

Luck, fate and effortless success had barely influenced Brown’s career so far. Everything he had accomplished had been earned by diligence and unpleasant experience. After the election there would be profits, losses and mixed blessings. Among the last were the arrangements for his office, which were certainly fateful and, in the long term, unhelpful.

The small, windowless office he was assigned in the heart of the building could barely contain two desks and filing cabinets. Discomfort did not bother Brown, nor was he anything more than a little bemused by the choice of his co-occupant, Tony Blair, another newly elected MP. Subsequently, some would say that the coupling was not mere coincidence, but was the manoeuvre of a skilful matchmaker in the whips’ office brokering the notion that the two novices epitomised the party’s future hopes. That is unlikely. The two new young MPs were markedly different, although bonds would eventually develop.

Tony Blair had never abandoned the fringes of the Labour Party adopted as a long-haired rock guitarist at Oxford. Uneducated about political theory, he had shown little interest in politics, pursuing an unremarkable career at the Bar. His affability, eagerness and flattery of Brown’s political mastery appealed to the Scotsman who already bore the scars of political battles. Together they could laugh. Blair was a good mimic, and Brown’s sarcasm was witty. Brown was generous: as a television producer he had perfected the art of scripting his interviewees’ opinions into snappy, pertinent soundbites. Blair received the benefit of that black art, also learning how to write eye-catching press releases, compose structured public speeches and cultivate the techniques of self-presentation. Taught to encourage the best in people, Blair deferred with courtesy to the confident grammar-school boy. Brown and Blair, in that order, became affectionately known around Westminster as ‘the twins’ or ‘the blood brothers’.