Gordon Brown: Prime Minister

His election to the party’s executive coincided with the earlier appointment of Helen Liddell, a bus driver’s daughter who would later be known as ‘Stalin’s Granny’, as the Scottish party’s general secretary, and George Robertson as chairman. His encounters with both did not improve his popularity. As BBC Scotland’s economics correspondent, Liddell had a high public profile, and was an attractive face for Labour. Her appointment did not interrupt her frequent appearances on television news. Self-promotion, carped her critics, seemed more important to Liddell than engaging in the grind of party work and leadership. Her supporters countered that her value was in forging good relations with people. That was no consolation for Brown. Generally he did not handle women well, and he particularly lacked affection for Liddell. At executive meetings he was humiliated as she launched criticisms of him, especially of the ‘Red Paper on Scotland’, whose neo-Marxism she regarded as a threat to the party, regularly beginning with the phrase ‘The national leadership says … ’ Those seemingly innocuous words could be fatal to Brown’s ambitions. His energy and politics were creating rivals and occasionally enemies, just as his need for friends and benevolent advisers had become greatest.

In 1978 his impatience to become an MP was damaging his relationship with Margarita. Repeatedly, planned visits to the cinema and parties were abandoned as he responded to a telephone call and rushed to yet another meeting. In desperation, one night she had telephoned Owen Dudley Edwards with a ruse, asking, ‘Can you come down? Gordon wants you.’ Dudley Edwards arrived to discover that Brown was still drinking in a pub with two friends. Leaving Margarita alone had caused him no concern. The three friends eventually returned, slightly merry. Normally Brown’s companions would crash out on the floor while he flopped in an armchair to read a serious book. But on this occasion, while Margarita loudly reproached him, he picked her up and laughingly carried her to their bedroom. ‘You can see how in love they are,’ sang Dudley Edwards.

In an attempt to restore their faltering relationship, Margarita organised a weekend trip to a country cottage, and disconnected the telephone. Brown exploded in a rage. Relationships with women were sideshows in his life. He had become disturbed by the uneasy contrast of living with a sophisticated woman who enjoyed good food and elegant clothes, and the plight of Scottish workers, striking in large numbers across the country. While the party was immersed in strife as it tried to resolve the turmoil, Margarita seemed merely to tolerate Scottish provincialism, being principally concerned about the arrangements to visit her family in Geneva and her royal friends in their palatial homes across Europe. After five years, she also wanted evidence that the relationship had a future. Regardless of his affection, Brown was uncertain whether he could commit himself to a woman who was not a socialist, or could risk appearing with a princess before a constituency committee.

This crossroads in his personal life coincided with a remarkable political opportunity. Alexander Wilson, the Labour MP for Hamilton, a town south of Glasgow, died, and the constituency was looking for a candidate for the by-election on 31 May 1978. Hamilton had many attractions for Brown. The seat was a Labour stronghold, several senior party members had offered him their support, and his parents had moved to a church in the town. The obstacles were the other aspiring candidates. Alf Young, a journalist, was among them, although his chance of success was nil. Brown telephoned Young and asked whether he would stand aside. Young politely refused, adding that George Robertson, the Scottish party’s former chairman, who was supported by a major trade union, appeared certain of success. Brown aggressively challenged Young’s obstinacy, but failed to persuade him to surrender. A decisive voice, Brown knew, would be Jimmy Allison’s, the party’s organiser and a mini-Godfather. ‘It’s tight,’ said Allison, who knew the area well, ‘but you can win if you fight.’ Crucially, Allison pledged his support if Brown mounted a challenge. There might be blood, warned Allison, but that was acceptable among brothers. Even George Robertson, the favourite, acknowledged that there would be ‘a big fight’ if Brown stood, and the outcome would be uncertain.

‘I don’t know,’ Brown told Allison a few days later. ‘I think I should be loyal to the people in Edinburgh South. I don’t want to be seen as a carpetbagger and offend the good people who have helped me.’ Allison dismissed that as an irrelevance. Brown grunted and agreed to contact the party activists in Hamilton. But they, Allison heard, were unimpressed by his eagerness to avoid a fight with Robertson. Brown spoke about not being disloyal to the electors of Edinburgh South, but in truth he lacked the courage to work the system with a killer instinct. His caution was unexpected. Six years earlier he had confidently challenged Michael Swann. Outsiders were puzzled why the same determination now seemed to be lacking. They failed to understand Brown’s insecurity. He was still shocked by the consequences of his university protest for his academic career. His judgement, he believed, had been faulty. While he could confidently repudiate intellectual arguments, he lacked the resilience to withstand emotional pressure. He needed reassurance, but he had no one he could rely on. Some of his friends would dispute that he lacked courage. Others would say he feared failure. His consolation was hard work. Diligence, he believed, merited reward, and without hard work there should be no reward. That credo may be commendable for normal life, but not for ambitious politicians. Brown withdrew. Without a serious challenger, Robertson was nominated, and won the by-election by a margin of more than 6,000 votes. If Brown had arrived in Westminster in 1978, his own life, and possibly the Labour Party’s, would have been markedly different.

Similar indecisiveness plagued Brown’s relationship with Margarita. For weeks he hardly spent any time in Marchmont Road. James Callaghan had succeeded Harold Wilson as Labour prime minister, and increasingly Brown was preoccupied by the erosion of Callaghan’s authority – the government’s dependence on other parties at Westminster for a parliamentary majority had become unreliable – and the slide towards industrial chaos. In Scotland the party’s problems were compounded by disagreement about devolution. A referendum was to be held in March 1979, and the party was divided.

Excluded from those preoccupations, Margarita decided to end the relationship and leave Marchmont Road. ‘I never stopped (#litres_trial_promo) loving him,’ she said in 1992, ‘but one day it didn’t seem right any more. It was politics, politics, politics, and I needed nurturing.’ Brown’s friends would say that he terminated the relationship. ‘She took it badly,’ they said, ‘that she was less important than meetings.’ But in truth Margarita simply was fed up, and walked out. A few weeks later she met Jim Keddie, a handsome fireman, with whom she started an affair that would last for six years. During the first months Brown telephoned her frequently to arrange meetings, but despite his entreaties that she return, she refused. Over a long session of drinks with Owen Dudley Edwards, Brown repeatedly said, ‘It’s the greatest mistake of my life. I should have married Margarita.’ If he had been elected to Westminster in 1974 or 1978 they might have married, but the uncertainty created irreconcilable pressures. Jim Keddie was convinced that Brown remained haunted by Margarita. Although Margarita never mentioned any regret about leaving Brown, for several months after her departure she would turn up without Keddie at parties in Marchmont Road, or would see Brown at dinner parties held by Wilf Stevenson, a man convinced of his own glorious destiny. Keddie sensed that she hoped the relationship might be rekindled, but there was no reunion. ‘It just hasn’t happened,’ Brown would say thereafter about love and marriage. In the space of a few months he had lost the chance of both an early arrival in Westminster and marriage to a woman he loved. Whether he was influenced by his research into James Maxton’s life, with all its failures and disappointments, to avoid similar distress himself is possible, but he had failed to overcome his caution and indecisiveness.

Beyond a tight circle of friends, Brown concealed his emotions and re-immersed himself in politics. For an aspiring realist, the prognosis could not have been worse. The trade unions were organising constant strikes, public services were disintegrating and inflation was soaring. The ‘winter of discontent’ began. Rubbish lay uncollected on the streets, the dead remained unburied and hospital porters refused to push the sick into operating theatres. The middle classes and many working-class Labour voters switched to the Conservatives to save them from what they felt had become a socialist hell. The opinion polls predicted Margaret Thatcher’s victory whenever James Callaghan dared to call the election. Brown’s prospects in Edinburgh South looked dismal, but once again he was offered an attractive alternative.

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 (#litres_trial_promo), 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 (#litres_trial_promo) 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 (#litres_trial_promo) 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 (#ulink_f1281480-2c7c-55ee-9ca2-65337aeb1631)

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’.

Weeks after the election, over a drink in a Glasgow pub with Doug Henderson, then a regional organiser for the GMWU, Brown spoke about his experiences and about some of the other new MPs. Henderson had known Brown for ten years, discussing politics on platforms around Scotland and against each other on The Lion’s Share, a local television programme. ‘That Blair fellow,’ said Brown, ‘he’s quite clever.’

Although Brown was instinctively more left-wing than Blair, he benefited from the proximity of a sympathetic soulmate. During their frequent conversations, not least later during their journeys abroad, they discovered a mutual frustration about the party’s direction and a common bewilderment about the solution. But in his maiden speech on 27 July 1983, Brown revealed no ideological dilemmas. His theme was the plight of his unemployed constituents. In an engaging delivery, he described ‘a new arithmetic of depression and despair’ – the ‘tragic toll’ of mass unemployment: ‘The chance of a labourer getting a job in my constituency is 150 to 1 against. There is only one vacancy in the local careers office for nearly five hundred teenagers who have recently left school.’ He criticised the government for not only causing unemployment in the crumbling coal, linoleum and textile industries, but for penalising the helpless victims of those closures. There was heartfelt grief in his description of those in the desolate communities expecting redundancy and fearing permanent financial hardship. Ignoring their plight, he continued, the government proposed to reduce benefits while taunting the unemployed that new jobs were available, if only they looked. The government’s task, he said, was to create those new jobs: ‘The House was told in 1948 that the welfare state was created to take the shame out of need. Is that principle to be overthrown by an ever-increasing set of government assaults on the poor that are devoid of all logic, bereft of all morality and vindictive even beyond monetarism?’ Brown was pleased by the murmurs of approval his ardour evoked. In his opinion, only state intervention and the imposition of a minimum wage could help those at the bottom of the social ladder. The conviction socialist derided the notion that free markets and self enterprise were preferable to planning by Whitehall.

On the Conservative side there was respect for the feisty newcomer, but also some derision. Brown ignored the Tory riposte that Labour was responsible for unemployment in Fife. Jim Callaghan’s government had plunged the country into chaos, and now this young Scotsman was proposing to reintroduce the same discredited politics. Labour’s cure for ‘the sick man of Europe’ was similar to the Marxist dogma then crippling the communist countries of eastern Europe. Brown might win smiles by ridiculing the notion of the unemployed becoming self-reliant, if only by buying a ladder, bucket and cloth and offering themselves as window cleaners; he might arouse titters of laughter by taunting the Tories that ‘Up your ladder’ appeared to have replaced Norman Tebbit’s ‘On your bike’ speech; but the nation had now voted twice in succession against the legacy of Attlee, Wilson and Callaghan.

Brown was undeterred. To him, self-improvement was as repulsive as the government’s plan to persuade the young unemployed to accept lower wages or face a cut in their benefits if an offer of training was refused. ‘Essentially,’ he told the Commons, quoting confidential government documents leaked to him by a sympathiser, ‘the papers say that the DHSS are to inculcate good working habits in the unemployed. What the government would be better doing is bringing new jobs to the area.’

Penalising the personal behaviour of the working classes through taxation had been attacked in 1937 by Ernest Bevin, Attlee’s future foreign minister who was then leader of the TGWU. For Bevin and all socialists, the worst aspect of such retribution was the means tests to assess whether the poor should receive assistance from the state. The degradation of the inspections to assess poverty, argued Bevin, inhibited the poor both from saving and from seeking work. Forty-seven years later, Brown repeated the same arguments as an attack on the Conservative government’s review of universal payments of benefits to all, irrespective of wealth. In his opinion, even to consider targeting payments exclusively towards the poor was heresy. Means tests, he believed, were inhuman because they ‘would deter the (#litres_trial_promo) claims of those most in need’. In his excitement he criticised the right-wing Adam Smith Institute on BBC TV’s Panorama on 10 December 1984 for, as he claimed, recommending the end of child benefit and the abolition of the welfare state. Sixteen months later, after difficult negotiations, the BBC apologised for broadcasting Brown’s erroneous statement. Brown was embarrassed. He prided himself on quoting carefully researched facts, and took exception to any accusation of mistakes or worse, distortion.

In London, his life beyond politics was limited. He shared a flat in the Barbican with Andrew, his younger brother, who was also employed as his personal assistant. He worked relentlessly, rarely appearing in the Commons bars or tea rooms to cultivate friendships. On Friday afternoons, long after most MPs had returned to their constituencies and homes, he sat alone in his cramped office, the floor covered in press releases, books and newspapers, speaking on the telephone. On Saturdays in Edinburgh he was occasionally seen with Marion Caldwell at parties, but he preferred that she remained out of sight. He liked drinking with his friends in pubs and especially working men’s clubs. There was a sincere fraternity in having a pint with workers who shared his love of the Labour Party and its heroes. He fumed against the reduction of grants to the Rosyth naval shipyard in his constituency, deriding proposals to privatise it and publishing a pamphlet attacking the arms trade and proposing that the yard should be converted for civilian use. He also opposed the closure of any coalmines, although they were often uneconomic, and caused many of those who worked in them to suffer fatal illnesses. On every social and economic argument he supported the hard, socialist solution. A test of those sentiments arose during the miners’ strike in March 1984.

Few doubted that Arthur Scargill, the National Union of Mineworkers’ leader, was intent on repeating the miners’ triumph against Edward Heath in 1974. He wanted to prove his power to protect miners’ livelihoods and to embarrass a Conservative government. In 1981 he had humiliated Thatcher by threatening a strike if the government closed down uneconomic mines. Having assessed that the stocks of coal were low, Thatcher retreated. But two years later the government had quietly accumulated sufficient coal stocks to withstand a strike of at least six months. As anticipated, on 1 March 1984 Scargill declared a strike in Yorkshire. Knowing that he would lose a national ballot, he organised strikes in militant localities across the country without organising proper votes. Flying pickets intimidated other miners to strike. The television pictures of fierce clashes between trade unionists and the police, resulting in thousands of injuries and arrests, raised the stakes. If Scargill won, the Thatcher government would be as vulnerable as Heath’s had been. Her advantages were preparation and sharp disagreements among the miners. The outcome was not inevitable.

Regardless of Arthur Scargill’s shortcomings, the miners’ plight became a human tragedy. Neil Kinnock refused to condemn the strikers, while Gordon Brown openly supported them, protesting against the government’s ‘vindictive cuts’ and refusal to pay benefits to their families. Instead of condemning the violence, he pleaded with the police and government to release imprisoned miners, and never publicly criticised Scargill despite the strike’s questionable legitimacy and the lack of support from workers in the power, steel and transport industries. On the picket lines he openly praised the miners despite being irked to be standing with their wives in the cold and rain, organising their communities’ survival, while some strikers were drinking in their clubs. At Christmas a trickle of English miners returned to work, isolating the militants. In March 1985, after one year, the strike collapsed. Brown, however, had never wavered. He earned the miners’ gratitude, accepting in appreciation gifts of miners’ lamps and certificates.

Like most in the Labour movement, he did not fully understand the implications of the miners’ defeat. He thundered against the reduction of regional aid and the gradual loss of manufacturing jobs, and demanded that the government create new jobs, but he was bogged down in an ideological wasteland. Labour had reached a nadir, and was unelectable until the extremists in the party were expelled. Neil Kinnock had many weaknesses, but among his strengths was the courage in November 1984 to confront the militants in order to save the party from fratricide. Unlike many Labour MPs, Brown did not openly join that struggle. He did not travel through England supporting the fight against Tony Benn and the Militant Tendency, nor did he overtly attack the militants. Rather, he preferred to return directly to Scotland from London. Nevertheless, he was among the members of the new intake offered a chance to break the extremists’ stranglehold. Neil Kinnock told Roy Hattersley, ‘I want Tony Blair in the Treasury team.’ To avoid the impression of outright favouritism, Hattersley suggested that Kinnock appoint two new MPs, and that Brown also be promoted to speak on employment and social security. Labour needed his abilities, said Hattersley. Kinnock had met Brown during the devolution debates in Scotland. Although they had disagreed, he appreciated the young Scotsman’s efforts to prevent a party split. Soon after the 1983 election Donald Dewar had proposed that Brown should join the Scottish team, but Kinnock had resisted, saying he should cut his teeth first. By the time Hattersley made his suggestion, Kinnock felt Brown deserved promotion. But while Blair accepted the offer and was appointed spokesman on the City and finance, Brown refused. ‘I wasn’t ready (#litres_trial_promo),’ he later explained. ‘It’s crazy that Gordon rejected the offer,’ Blair complained to Hattersley. ‘The problem is that Gordon is so honest,’ replied the bemused deputy leader.

Brown’s refusal was not wholly altruistic. He had, he believed, too much to lose by accepting a junior post, not least a delay to the completion of his biography of James Maxton. If he had written the book a decade earlier, his analysis of Maxton’s life would have lacked his personal experience of political struggle. In his heart Brown idolised his hero’s idealism for social responsibility, education and the abolition of poverty. But in his head he understood how Maxton had undermined his ambitions for a better society by refusing to compromise to obtain power. ‘The party whose cause he championed for forty years could, with justice,’ Brown wrote, ‘be accused of committing political suicide for the sake of ideological purity.’

In spring 1985, as the biography neared completion, Labour moved ahead in the opinion polls and the opposition parties won important victories in the local elections. Electorally, Labour’s devotion to traditional socialism appeared justified. Despite the defeat of the miners, the government had been shaken by the botched privatisation of British Leyland, rising inflation and high unemployment. Brown was writing a regular weekly column for the Daily Record, the Scottish version of the Daily Mirror, providing money to pay his researchers and access to a wide audience. Through his many contacts he sought confidential information to embarrass the government in the Commons and in the newspaper. Once it was seen that he handled leaks properly and could be trusted, he expected a regular supply.

In May 1985 he secured a confidential government review proposing to encourage the young unemployed to find jobs by reducing their social benefits. This, he raged, was ‘a raid on (#litres_trial_promo) the poor’. In July he attacked the government for employing undercover agents to investigate young mothers claiming benefits for single households while secretly cohabiting. Those investigations, he claimed, punished the poor. Brown’s pride lay in his probity. Lawyers at the Daily Record were disturbed by the threat of a libel writ following an item in his column about the sale of council houses in East Kilbride. The newspaper wanted to settle, but Brown refused. He was, the newspaper’s lawyers remarked, ‘obsessive to be perceived as utterly truthful’. He discreetly warned the complainants, ‘If you want to carry on and do business in the future when we’re in government, you should drop the libel action.’ The complaint was withdrawn, and eventually Brown’s allegations were confirmed. Since Robert Maxwell had bought the Mirror Group in July 1984 Brown had refused invitations to his parties, albeit without revealing his reasons. Nevertheless, he was content to take Maxwell’s money and promote his own profile.

The change of the political atmosphere in 1985 persuaded Brown to accept a front bench appointment. The invitation in November to work with the shadow spokesman for trade and industry by specialising in regional affairs was issued from John Smith’s office. Initially the two men forged an easy relationship, convincing themselves that the omens for electoral success were good. Thatcher’s position looked vulnerable, especially in Scotland, after a huge increase in rates. As the value of sterling fell following a drop in the price of oil, Labour was convinced that capitalism was in crisis. The mini-earthquake caused by ‘Big Bang’, the deregulation of the stock market in October 1986, confirmed their belief that capitalism was besmirched. The sight of bankers and brokers selling their companies for huge sums to foreign invaders aroused disdain about Thatcherism and free markets. Brown did not anticipate the social revolution sparked by the disappearance of the City’s traditional classes, or the rise of a meritocracy who would be unimpressed by his campaign to renationalise the privatised industries. Others close to him did understand however. In conversations with Gavyn Davies, then an economist at Goldman Sachs, the American merchant bank, and husband of Neil Kinnock’s assistant Sue Nye, John Eatwell, a Cambridge economist who was advising Kinnock, and especially Peter Mandelson, the party’s new director of press and public relations, he heard the first arguments in favour of a reconsideration of Labour’s policies.

Peter Mandelson, the grandson of Herbert Morrison, a prominent minister in Atlee’s government, and a former television producer, was attractive to Brown. He appreciated Mandelson’s vision for the party to ‘modernise’, although neither fully understood the obstacles to Labour’s re-election. Both were encouraged by a new self-confidence at the party conference in 1986 in Blackpool, not least by the first defeat of the extremists. Under Mandelson’s influence, Labour was distancing itself from the Attlee legacy to attract the middle classes. The red flag, the party’s traditional symbol, was replaced by a red rose, to suggest the abandonment of a strident socialist agenda, especially confiscatory taxes, although the party’s actual policies contradicted the impression. Brown returned to Scotland to fight the 1987 election pledging to abandon Britain’s independent nuclear capacity, close America’s military bases, halt the sale of council houses and repeal the Tory laws limiting trade union power.

Labour’s certainty that the Tories would not win a third consecutive election should have been shaken in the new year. The economy improved – growth increased to 4.8 per cent – and despite violent picketing outside News International’s new headquarters in Wapping, Labour refused to condemn the trade unions outright. Three million were unemployed, but the opinion polls swung back in the Tories’ favour, showing Labour at 29 per cent, the SDP-Liberal Alliance at 26 per cent and the Conservatives at 43 per cent.