Special report
A man of substance 17 May 2010 On the divided opinion that has dogged Gordon Brown In the end there was a dignified exit, thanks in no small part to two small boys holding their parents’ hands as they left as a family from the famous address that had been their home. Acrimony and doubts were put to one side as the nation uttered ‘ahh’ with a collective sigh. Brown was human after all and this, the first glimpse of those two children, happy, handsome and normal, skipping away from No 10 was also the final act of defiance from a man who had always kept that side of his life private. ‘Look how you misjudged me,’ he might as well have cried. Right up until the end, the speculation about Brown’s flawed personality abounded as reality and myth began to merge and in the fevered atmosphere of the immediate hours after the election result, anything was fair game, however ridiculous. The Sun newspaper carried a poking-fun front page about a 59-year-old man squatting illegally in No 10. Commentators argued about which room he would be holed up in and how he would be dragged from No 10 clinging on to door frames by the very tips of those badly bitten fingernails. There were reports of explosive rows with Nick Clegg, with claims that the PM had let rip a string of expletives at his would-be coalition partner. All of this was made possible because of the doubts that already existed about Brown’s character. As a result, his eventual resignation as leader of the Labour Party was not so much seen as an act of loyalty but as one of a desperate man hoping to forge a coalition between his party and the Lib Dems and yet still allow him four months in power as PM. The question of why he wanted leadership was hardly given a thought but the fact that he did, when it was clearly not his natural bedfellow, even less so. His supporters claim Brown does everything for the sake of the common good and his belief in public service. To the extent that he was prepared to forgo his own humility and desire to stay below the parapet for the good of the team. His critics say he is power mad and a bully. Regardless, Gordon Brown may have spent his whole political career trying to be what he is not – a natural born leader – and in the end was still trying to boss around those that had more of a mandate from the electorate to do the job than him. It is this apparent bombastic self-belief that sharply divides opinion on him but love him or hate him, there is no doubt that he is a man with an enormous desire to do the right thing as long as it is his ‘right thing’. He may say it is in the name of the common good and not out of self-interest but it is how that translates into practice that creates the divergence of opinion. Government can not and should not operate as a one-man show. Good governance requires you to take others with you and demands a flexibility to bend and all along, other than that one big concession of standing aside for Blair, he was unable to do that. Insiders talk of being cast into an ‘outer darkness’ if they merely suggested an alternative view. Brown is a man that needs a foil and for the last two years as the unelected leader, he has had none. Instead he surrounded himself with a bunch of sycophants – he was as guilty as his predecessor of building a non-critical band of support – with no one there to say, ‘Gordon, you are wrong’. And if they did, it seems he would, metaphorically if not literally, beat them into submission. He is physically a big beast; impatient and keen to get things done even when the details haven’t been quite hammered out and his accepted modus operandi was made worse by claims of bullying that just would not go away. Even his closest allies refuse to outright deny allegations of bullying and simply talk of him being strident and demanding. But the fact that he thinks he is right, no matter what, doesn’t make his actions right. And certainly, having lost an election and still believing he could play a part in brokering a deal that he no longer had a legitimacy to be part of was audacious in the extreme but his ability to misjudge a situation has become a mark of the man. Think Mrs Duffy, for one. Many things will be written about the former PM over the next few days and weeks but in reality, his two years in office at No 10 will probably amount to little more than a footnote in the pages of history compared with his decade as the iron chancellor. What a pity that it took his final exit – hand in hand with his three-year-old son – to offer an insight into the man behind the politics. Related articles: Working together 25 June 2010 Delivering on 2020 25 June 2010 Vocational education 11 June 2010 A week in politics 17 May 2010 A new beginning 17 May 2010 See all articles in this category Submit a comment |
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