History > 2007 > UK > Politics > Prime Minister Gordon Brown (V)

Schrank

political cartoon

The Independent on Sunday

1.7.2007

L to R:

Gordon Brown

George W. Bush

2.30pm update

UN a million miles

from meeting development goals,

says Brown

Tuesday July 31, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Patrick Wintour in New York and Matthew Tempest

Gordon Brown has used his first speech to the UN as prime minister to warn the world that it is a "million miles" from meeting its promises to relieve poverty, HIV and illiteracy in poor countries.

Mr Brown told an audience of world leaders, businessmen and diplomats that, at the current rate, some of the UN's touchstone Millennium Development Goals - due to be fulfilled by 2015 - were a century away from being honoured.

Describing this as a "global emergency", the prime minister focused relentlessly on the role businesses and faith groups - as well as governments - had to play in reinvigorating progress.

He said: "Some people call it the mobilisation of soft power. I call it people power, people power in support of the leadership of developing countries."

Mr Brown vowed to bring together 12 world leaders and 20 top business figures to sign up to a new commitment to meet the eight MDG targets - which range from maternal mortality to the spread of malaria.

In strongly moral language he called it a "coalition of conscience" and a "coalition for justice", which in the end could make "globalisation a force for justice on a global scale".

Although the 30-minute speech did not mention Iraq or Afghanistan, and concentrated instead on helping the developing world, Mr Brown did touch on Darfur, as expected.

He announced that later today the UK, along with the US and France, would table a new UN resolution which would see a 20,000-strong peacekeeping force - the largest in the world - sent to Sudan by October 1.

Mr Brown again described the conflict in Darfur, which has cost an estimated 200,000 lives and created two million refugees, as the "greatest humanitarian disaster" facing the world today. However, he warned the Sudanese government: "We must be clear: if any party blocks progress and the killings continue, I and others will redouble our efforts to impose further sanctions.

"The message for Darfur is that it is time for change."

Mr Brown is acutely aware that previous UN resolutions did not lead to action.

But British officials believe that the Chinese - previously reluctant to back a tough military mandate for the force - are becoming more sensitive to their international reputation in the run-up to the Olympic games next summer and will now relent.

The eight MDGs, signed by most of the nations on earth in 2000 with a deadline of 2015, set out to halve the proportion of the world's population living on under a dollar a day; to halve the proportion of people suffering from hunger; to provide universal primary education for all the world's citizens, principally in Africa; to ensure that all girls had the right to be educated to at least primary if not secondary level; to cut by two thirds the under-five mortality rate; to cut by 75% the maternal mortality rate; to begin to reverse the spread of both HIV and malaria; to halve the number of people without access to fresh drinking water, and to cut developing world debt and increase aid.

Mr Brown told his audience: "We cannot allow our promises that became pledges to descend into just aspirations, and then wishful thinking, and then only words that symbolise broken promises.

"We did not make the commitment to the Millennium Development Goals only for us to be remembered as the generation that betrayed promises rather than honoured them and undermined trust that promises can ever be kept.

"So it is time to call it what it is: a development emergency which needs emergency action.

"If 30,000 children died needlessly and avoidably every day in America or Britain we would call it an emergency. And an emergency is what it is."

On current rates, Mr Brown pointed out that it would take until 2100, not 2015, to provide worldwide primary education.

A UN progress report on meeting the goals found that while the proportion of people living on one dollar a day or less had declined from 45.9% to 41.1% since 1999, reaching the MDG target of halving the extent of extreme poverty by 2015 required that the current pace be almost doubled.

There had been progress towards universal primary education, with enrolment increasing from 57% in 1999 to 70% in 2005 - but a gap of 30% remained, and the number of school-age children was increasing daily.

Although the share of parliamentary seats held by women had increased substantially, from 7% in 1990 to 17% this year, the share of women who earned a salary, aside from farming, still stood at less than one third in 2005.

Mr Brown said he wanted to "call into being, beyond governments alone, a global partnership for development and together harness the energy, the ideas and the talents of the private sector, consumers, non-governmental organisations and faith groups and citizens everywhere".

He quoted both Winston Churchill, the former British prime minister, and John F Kennedy, the former US president, saying: "In 1960, here in America, President John Kennedy called for a peace corps, an international commitment to harness the idealism many felt in the face of threats to human progress and world peace.

"Today we should evoke the same spirit to forge a coalition for justice.

"And when conscience is joined to conscience, moral force to moral force, think how much our power to do good can achieve.

"Governments, business, scientists, engineers, doctors, nurses, charities and faith groups coming together to make globalisation a force for justice on a global scale."

Mr Brown now heads back to the UK - and a family holiday in Scotland over the summer recess - after three days in the US that have seen him meet George Bush, cross-party leaderships on Capitol Hill, and, this morning, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, for private talks.

Before making his speech today, Mr Brown also met Bill Clinton to discuss the work of the former president's foundation, including its drive against Aids in Africa.

The decision to highlight both world poverty and the importance of the UN in his speech today was clearly designed to balance the impact of holding lengthy talks at Camp David with Mr Bush, still a hugely unpopular figure in the UK.

The Brown speech was also designed to highlight the prime minister's belief that Britain could deploy both soft and hard power.

    UN a million miles from meeting development goals, says Brown, UN, 31.7.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,,2138478,00.html

New ties tested

as 'the humorous Scotsman'

boards Golf Cart One

Tuesday July 31, 2007
Guardian
Patrick Wintour

"Do you come here quite a bit?" Gordon Brown's opening gambit as he met President Bush in the mists and woods of Camp David does not quite rank alongside "Dr Livingstone, I presume" as one of the great historic greetings. But with these words began a new era of the special relationship.

Their clothes told a story too. When the two men met on Sunday night, Mr Brown sported a suit, his now standard sky-blue tie, and what the official White House report described as wing tips. He eschewed the New Labour-issue tight jumper and even tighter jeans, as sported by Tony Blair at his first Camp David summit in 2001. Mr Bush, meanwhile, looked as if he had assembled his wardrobe from the local charity shop. He wore a lurid blue shirt, red tie, dark blue jacket and thick brogues.

The president ushered his new friend into Golf Cart One, waved and with a flourish and glint in his eye, executed a playful 360-degree turn in front of the press corps. Mr Brown lurched to his right and came close to tumbling out, all the while holding the fixed grin of someone dreading an afternoon playing with a boisterous toddler.

At the press conference yesterday, the atmosphere was friendly, but cooler than when Mr Blair was here. Back then, President Bush would look across the podium to stare admiringly at the prime minister who stood by him in Iraq and articulated the fight against terrorism with a fluency he sometimes lacked.

By contrast, Mr Brown yesterday read a prepared statement, emphasising the relationship between the two countries, but said little of Mr Bush.

But Mr Bush went to the issue of Mr Brown's character from the start, admitting the two of them did not know what to expect of one another or whether they would be able to get along and find common ground. He described Mr Brown as a principled man, before warming to his theme: "He is not the dour Scot you describe, nor the awkward Scot. He is the humorous Scotsman. We were able to relax. He is a problem solver. He is a glass-half-full man. He is not a glass-half-empty man."

The president also paid tribute to Mr Brown's personal courage. "In his family life he is a man who has suffered unspeakable tragedies," Mr Bush said. "Instead of weakening his soul, it has strengthened his soul."

He also admitted he had been listening very carefully to see if Mr Brown understands the ideological struggle. The president seemed to approve of the new man at No 10. "He gets it," Mr Bush said.

    New ties tested as 'the humorous Scotsman' boards Golf Cart One, G, 31.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2138183,00.html

Brown: I am at one

with President Bush on terror

July 30, 2007
From Times Online
David Byers

Gordon Brown today vowed to stay the course in Iraq and be "at one" with President Bush in what he described as an ideological battle against worldwide terrorism.

In the Prime Minister's first news conference with the US President since coming to power, Mr Brown said that there were "duties to discharge and responsibilities to keep" in Iraq, adding that terrorism was a "crime against humanity".

In a half-hour question and answer session at Camp David in Maryland, President Bush praised the Prime Minister as a man who understands the ideological struggle for freedom and democracy against the "terrorist threat".

Before their press conference, the two men had wide-ranging discussions, starting with a one-on-one breakfast meeting at Camp David before opening up their talks to a wider group, including Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, and David Miliband, Foreign Secretary.

Mr Brown told the press conference that Britain aimed to move control over to the Iraqi authorities, but would only do so based on military decisions rather than political ones.

"Our aim, like the United States is, step-by-step, to move control to the Iraqi authorities," Mr Brown said, adding that decisions to move troops would only be made "on the military advice of our commanders on the ground".

As he did in an earlier Washington Post editorial, Mr Brown praised President Bush, saying it was a "great honour" to hold talks with the President and "to affirm and to celebrate the historic partnership of shared purpose" between the nations.

He said he had told the President that it was "in Britain’s national interest that, with all our energies, we work together to address all the great challenges that we face, also together: nuclear proliferation; climate change; global poverty and prosperity; the Middle East peace process which we have discussed and, most immediately, international terrorism."

He added: "Terrorism is not a cause, it is a crime and it is a crime against humanity."

President Bush said that Mr Brown had understood that the two countries were fighting an ideological battle against terrorism akin to that fought against Communism in the Cold War.

The President said: "I found him a person who shares that vision and who understands the call.

"After all, we are writing the initial chapters of what I believe is a great ideological struggle between those of us who do believe in freedom and justice and human rights and human dignity and cold-blooded killers who will kill innocent people to achieve their objectives."

The President said he had not found Mr Brown to be a "dour Scotsman" as some journalists indicated beforehand. "You are not a dour Scotsman or an awkward Scotsman. He is a humorous Scotsman," he said.

In an editorial in the Washington Post earlier today, Mr Brown had hailed the shared ideals that unite the two nations. "I believe our Atlantic partnership is rooted in something far more fundamental and lasting than common interests or even common history: It is anchored in shared ideals that have for two centuries linked the destinies of our two countries," he wrote.

"This partnership of purpose matters now more than ever. For if in the last century we fought together to save the very idea of freedom from the totalitarian threat, in this generation we defend together the ideal of freedom against the terrorist threat."

The two leaders said they also used today's talks to discuss the crisis in Darfur, climate change and the Middle East peace process.

    Brown: I am at one with President Bush on terror, Ts online, 30.7.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2168199.ece

Brown invokes Churchill

as he stresses ‘shared destiny’ with US

July 30, 2007
From The Times
Sam Coates and Tom Baldwin in Washington

Gordon Brown invoked the words of Winston Churchill yesterday by reaffirming his belief in the “joint inheritance” that binds Britain and the United States.

As the Prime Minister prepared to stay at Camp David as the guest of President Bush, he tried to damp down speculation about emerging transatlantic tensions and to quash claims that he is considering withdrawing British troops from Iraq.

Downing Street insisted that policy on Iraq remained unaltered and Mr Brown emphasised his deep personal affection for America, describing himself as an “Atlanticist” and saying: “We should acknowledge the debt the world owes to the United States for its leadership in this fight against international terrorism.”

As he set off to Camp David in Maryland, where he was dining à deux with Mr Bush last night, he quoted Churchill’s speech describing the principles of freedom and the rights of man as “the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world”.

The words will not be lost on Mr Bush, who has become a voracious reader of history and keeps a bust of Churchill — lent to him by Tony Blair six years ago — in the Oval Office at the White House.

Mr Brown said: “When, at my meeting with President Bush, I talk of a joint inheritance — not just of shared history but shared values founded on a shared destiny — I mean the idea that everyone is created equal, that there should be freedom of expression for all faiths, that arts and culture should celebrate diversity, that government should be open and accountable, that there should be opportunity for all — for all men and all women — and a belief in free trade.”

The reference to trade reflects Mr Brown’s determination to press for an agreement on international trade in negotiations this autumn. Aides say he has already had detailed discussions with other world leaders on this issue and a deal is “quite close”.

Other priorities for the British contingent in formal talks today, when officials joining the two leaders will include David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, and Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, will include the crisis in Darfur.

But Mr Brown’s spokesman dismissed suggestions yesterday that the Prime Minister would present the President with a plan to withdraw Britain’s remaining 5,500 troops from southern Iraq. Speculation had been fuelled by a report that Simon

McDonald, the Prime Minister’s foreign policy adviser, sounded out opinion about the effects of a British pull-out during a recent trip to Washington. This, according to The Sunday Times, left the impression he was “doing the groundwork” for a withdrawal.

The Prime Minister’s spokesman said that troops would remain until the Iraqi Army was deemed capable of maintaining security. “Simon McDonald made very clear at the meeting that the British Government’s position had not changed,” he added. White House sources say that they have been assured that Mr Brown’s Government will not even begin to look at changes before General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, delivers his September progress report on Mr Bush’s policy of pouring more American troops into the battle zone.

However, that date has already assumed red-letter significance on Capitol Hill, where many Republicans are preparing to demand a new strategy. And Britain’s military chiefs have made clear that they should be ready to hand over control of Basra by the end of the year.

Mr Brown will leave Camp David later today for talks with Congressional leaders before going to New York, where he is expected to deliver a speech on international development at the United Nations tomorrow. He does not want to be seen as adopting Tony Blair’s seemingly uncritical support for Mr Bush or as damaging Britain’s relationship with America.

Washington has been irritated by what one official described as “mixed signals” coming from Mr Brown’s Government.

But Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council at the White House, suggested that the Administration had developed a fairly thick skin and understood the domestic political pressures facing Mr Brown. He said: “A lot of people around the world say a lot of things every day, but we know where the core relationships really stand.”

The aircraft allocated for use by the Queen and Prime Minister could double up as a refuelling tanker for fighters under plans being considered by Downing Street and the RAF, The Times has learnt. The RAF would release one of 14 new A330s fitted with enlarged wings and fuel pods that are attached only when it is on tanker duty. Other options include an A320 executive jet and a second, 20-seat aircraft for flights within Europe.

    Brown invokes Churchill as he stresses ‘shared destiny’ with US, Ts, 30.7.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2163897.ece

6pm update

Brown points to UK withdrawal from combat in Iraq

Monday July 30, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Matthew Tempest, political correspondent

Gordon Brown today used his first summit with the US president to hold out the prospect of withdrawing British troops from a combat role in the one remaining zone of Iraq they control.

The prime minister put no timescale on the move, which would see the UK troops pull back from combat to "overwatch" operations in Basra, the fourth and final Iraqi province in the hands of the British.

But, standing beside president Bush at Camp David, in Maryland, he said there was a "chance" MPs could be informed of the step "when parliament returns". The House of Commons returns from recess on October 8.

The two men joked in an encounter that was businesslike but warm, though lacking the bonhomie that existed between Mr Bush and Mr Brown's predecessor, Tony Blair.

Mr Bush called the new PM a "humorous Scotsman" who was not "dour or awkward", and the two men joked about Mr Brown having six under-40s in his cabinet. "You must feel pretty damn old!" said Mr Bush.

The US president also called Mr Brown a "problem-solver".

The two men agreed to take forward further action, with a UN resolution against Sudan over the crisis in Darfur. And Mr Brown pointedly listed all the other world leaders he had held talks with in order to push forward the Doha world trade talks.

Mr Bush called the talks "good, relaxed and meaningful", saying Mr Brown had "proved his worthiness as a leader" in his response to the London and Glasgow bombing attempts, which happened immediately after he took over from Mr Blair.

But it was Mr Brown's words on Iraq that will be studied most closely. The PM described Afghanistan, rather than Iraq, as the "frontline against terrorism".

But Mr Bush said: "The consequences of failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States, and this prime minister understands that."

Mr Brown said there were "duties to discharge and responsibilities to keep" in support of the Iraqi government.

He said the aim was "step-by-step" to move control to the Iraqi forces and authorities.

Mr Brown said the intention was to move troops to "overwatch" status in the fourth and final province they controlled when circumstances allowed.

He also promised the creation of an economic development agency for Basra to help provide jobs and stability.

The presidential retreat of Camp David is not offered to all foreign leaders as a venue. Mr Bush and Mr Brown met for a private dinner last night, Mr Brown being driven across the estate in Mr Bush's "Golf Cart One" buggy, and again for a one-to-one breakfast this morning.

They were then joined for a longer session of talks by the US secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice, and the British foreign secretary, David Miliband.

Later today Mr Brown will travel to Capitol Hill for cross-party talks with Senate and Congressional leaders.

He then heads for New York and a meeting with the UN secretary general, Bam Ki-Moon, as well as an address to the assembly.

In Britain, the Liberal Democrats urged Mr Brown to challenge the US president to close Guantánamo Bay, renegotiate the UK's extradition treaty with America and negotiate a withdrawal from Iraq.

Sir Menzies Campbell said: "These should be the objective of a candid friend. The excessively subordinated relationship between the president and Mr Blair should be put to bed."

Earlier today, Mr Brown wrote in the Washington Post that the "battle of ideas" would prove as crucial as military might.

Mr Brown quoted the former US president Franklin Roosevelt, saying that the "arsenal of democracy" - schools, museums, newspapers and the arts - was just as important as weapons in defeating terrorists.

That was in line with an earlier comment from the international development secretary, Douglas Alexander, who warned that the US should put more emphasis on "soft power".

And Mr Brown again avoided using the term "war on terror", in favour of calling terrorism "a war against humanity".

In his first-person piece, Mr Brown referred to the so-called special relationship as a "partnership of purpose". And although he was careful to quote both Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan, he stressed "shared values" rather than an unequivocal London-Washington axis.

Mr Brown said: "The struggles of the 21st century are the battles that engage military might which we have been fighting together in Iraq and Afghanistan and through Nato - and they are also the battle of ideas."

The cold war was won through deterrence but also through "a cultural effort also on an unprecedented scale", he said.

He wrote: "Foundations, trusts, civil society and civic organisations - links between schools, universities, museums, institutes, churches, trade unions, sports clubs, societies ... those in newspapers, journals, cultural institutions and the arts and literature sought to expose the difference between moderation and violent extremism."

    Brown points to UK withdrawal from combat in Iraq, G, 30.7.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,,2137877,00.html

British Prime Minister Is Cautious

on Question of Iraq Troop Withdrawal

July 30, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:15 p.m. ET
The New York Times

CAMP DAVID, Md. (AP) -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told President Bush Monday he shares the U.S. view that there are ''duties to discharge and responsibilities to keep'' in Iraq.

''Our aim, like the United States is, step-by-step, to move control to the Iraqi authorities,'' Brown said, joining Bush at a news conference at the president's Maryland mountaintop ranch.

Brown hinted that a decision about British troop levels was coming soon, while assuring that such a determination would be based ''on the military advice of our commanders on the ground,'' thus echoing language often heard from Bush.

Indeed, minutes later, in response to a question, Bush said: ''The decisions on the way forward in Iraq must be made with a military recommendation as an integral part of it.''

The United Kingdom's commitment to the war is essential to the Bush administration. Britain has 5,500 troops there, with forces moving from a combat role to aiding local Iraqi forces.

Bush didn't directly answer whether he planned to pass on the war to the next president, who will take office in January 2009. But he suggested that was likely. ''This is going to take a long time in Iraq, just like the ideological struggle is going to take a long time,'' he said.

The Camp David meeting was an attempt by Brown and Bush to seek common footing between leaders new to each other, but who jointly oversee one of the world's most important alliances.

In deference to the U.S.-British relationship, Bush gave Brown the full foreign-leader treatment: a coveted overnight stay at the presidential retreat here, three meals of all-American fare and introductory talks spanning a range of weighty matters.

But building personal rapport was the main theme. The men have been together before, but this was their first official sit-down since Brown took office in Britain a month ago. There was some sign they achieved a connection, with Brown thanking Bush for his compassionate words about the death of a baby daughter four years ago and the two trading jokes about Brown's reputation as a dour Scotsman.

Still, what the men stressed was what their nations have in common when they appeared together before reporters -- 25 minutes late, a rarity for the usually punctual president -- to cap the two days of talks -- both one-on-one and with advisers.

''So everyone's wondering whether or not the prime minister and I were able to find common ground, to get along, to have a meaningful discussion,'' Bush said at the outset. ''And the answer is `Absolutely.'''

Bush said they met over dinner Sunday night for more than two hours alone, dismissing aides from both countries to the rustic camp's bowling alley (where the British side apparently prevailed).

''You know, he probably wasn't sure what to expect from me,'' the president said. ''I kinda had a sense of the kind of person I was going to be dealing with. I would describe Gordon Brown as a principled man who really wants to get something done.''

On the battle against terror, in particular, the men said there is no daylight between their views.

''We are one in fighting the battle against terrorism,'' said Brown.

Bush congratulated the prime minister on his response when his country was hit with terror threats and catastrophic flooding immediately after he took office. ''You've proved your worthiness as a leader.''

''He gets it,'' the president said of his new partner.

Some of Brown's advisers have caused a stir with comments about Bush's famously close ties with Brown's predecessor, Tony Blair, and the Iraq war -- raising questions about whether British troops were headed for an early withdrawal from Iraq.

''In Iraq we have duties to discharge and responsibilities to keep in support of the democratically elected government and in support of the explicit will of the international community,'' Brown said.

Military officials have said that British forces are likely to hand over control of Basra, the last area for which they hold responsibility, by the end of the year. Brown said at Bush's side that a decision on the future role of British troops could be announced to Parliament when it returns from a summer recess in October.

That decision would follow the scheduled September report to Bush by Army Gen. David Petraeus.

If Bush had any dissatisfaction about what he heard from Brown on Iraq, he didn't reveal it.

''There's no doubt in my mind he understands the stake of the struggle,'' Bush said. ''And there's no doubt in my mind that he will keep me abreast of his military commanders' recommendations based upon conditions on the ground.''

Notably, though, Brown is covering his bases. After leaving Bush, he planned to meet U.S. congressional leaders on Capitol Hill, where support for Bush on the war is fading.

He also was heading from Washington for New York, where he will hold talks with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and deliver a speech to the United Nations.

Brown arrived Sunday at Camp David, and the two got off to a chatty start. Brown could be overhead remarking on how he was honored to be at Camp David, given its rich history. Part of that history included a stop by Blair in 2001 when Bush barely knew him, either.

The alliance of the United States and Britain has long been shaped by personalities -- Roosevelt and Churchill, Reagan and Thatcher, Bush and Blair.

Bush likes to size up a fellow world leader in person and measure the person's mettle under fire. Yet time is short and his popularity and clout have worn away with the war in Iraq.

''What the president wants to find out is whether the new prime minister is a reliable ally,'' said Simon Serfaty, a European expert at the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

Associated Press writer David Stringer contributed to this report.

    British Prime Minister Is Cautious on Question of Iraq Troop Withdrawal, NYT, 30.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/washington/AP-Bush-Brown.html?hp

1pm

Brown hails

'partnership of purpose' with US

Monday July 30, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Matthew Tempest, political correspondent

Gordon Brown today stressed that the "battles of ideas" were as important as military might as he prepared to hold his first joint press conference with the US president, George Bush.

The prime minister and Mr Bush are locked in a day of talks at the presidential retreat of Camp David, with Iraq, Darfur, Iran and Afghanistan on the agenda.

But in an article today in the Washington Post, Mr Brown quoted the former US president Franklin Roosevelt when he said that the "arsenal of democracy" - schools, museums, newspapers and the arts - was just as important as weapons in defeating terrorists.

That is in line with earlier comments from Brown proteges, such as the international development secretary, Douglas Alexander, who has already warned that the US should put more emphasis on "soft power".

And Mr Brown again avoided using the term "war on terror", in favour of calling terrorism "a war against humanity".

Mr Brown and Mr Bush will appear together in front of the cameras at around 4.30pm UK-time today, before the PM leaves for New York and a speech at the United Nations.

Although the two leaders are expected to announce new measures against the Sudanese government in the face of the Darfur crisis, it will be the first time many of the president's team and aides get a close-up view of the new prime minister.

In his first-person piece Mr Brown refers to the special relationship as a "partnership of purpose". And although he is careful to quote both Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan, he stresses "shared values" rather than an unequivocal London-Washington axis.

Mr Brown stresses "The struggles of the 21st century are the battles that engage military might which we have been fighting together in Iraq and Afghanistan and through Nato - and they are also the battle of ideas."

He says the cold war was won both through the deterrence of "large amounts of weapons and a cultural effort also on an unprecedented scale".

He writes: "Foundations, trusts, civil society and civic organisations - links between schools, universities, museums, institutes, churches, trade unions, sports clubs, societies ... those in newspapers, journals, cultural institutions and the arts and literature sought to expose the difference between moderation and violent extremism."

Mr Brown and Mr Bush will be joined at the summit today by the foreign secretary, David Miliband, and the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. The stalled Doha round of trade talks is also on the agenda.

Last night at Camp David the two men had 90 minutes of talks with officials before going into a private dinner at the presidential retreat.

In his Washington Post article today, Mr Brown said: "It is our shared task to expose terrorism for what it is - not a cause but a crime. A crime against humanity.

"All of us must be vigilant in our determination to prevent attacks and defeat the forces of terrorism. And it is the values we share that make us best placed to succeed.

"So today the struggles of the 21st century are the battles that engage military might which we have been fighting together in Iraq and Afghanistan and through Nato - and they are also the battles of ideas.

"We must expose the contrast between great objectives to tackle global poverty and honour human dignity and the evils of terrorists who would bomb and maim people irrespective of faith, indifferent to the very existence of human life."

After his press conference this afternoon and lunch with President Bush Mr Brown will travel to Capitol Hill for cross-party talks with leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives, including senate majority leader Harry Reid and House speaker Nancy Pelosi.

    Brown hails 'partnership of purpose' with US, G, 30.7.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,,2137877,00.html

Dave brown

The Independent        30.7.2007

L to R: George W. Bush and Gordon Brown

'Yo, Brown!': PM arrives for first talks with Bush

Published: 30 July 2007
The Independent
By Andrew Grice, Political Editor in Washington

Gordon Brown tried to "move on" from the disaster in Iraq as he held his first meeting last night with US President George Bush since becoming Prime Minister.

Speaking to journalists during his flight to Washington, Mr Brown remarkably made no mention of Iraq in what was seen as an attempt to distance himself from what has become known in Britain as "Blair's war".

Plans to pull out the 5,500 British troops in southern Iraq were discussed by the two leaders over dinner at the President's Camp David retreat last night. Mr Brown was expected to reassure Mr Bush that he does not want to speed up plans to hand over the Basra area to Iraqi security forces.

The Bush administration does not want Britain to pull out quicker than agreed because that could increase the domestic pressure to withdraw US troops.

Simon McDonald, the Prime Minister's chief foreign policy adviser, discussed different scenarios on troop deployments with his American counterparts ahead of the Brown visit. But Downing Street insisted he made clear there was "no change" in the Government's policy.

Although Iraq and Iran's nuclear weapons programme are likely to top the agenda at Camp David, the two leaders will trumpet a public agreement on two less controversial issues. They will put pressure on other leaders to revive the stalled talks on a global trade agreement, and to speed up a resolution of the crisis in Darfur by redoubling pressure on the Sudanese government.

Mr Brown is trying to rally world leaders behind a four-point plan to end the impasse over Darfur. A new United Nations Security Council resolution, which could be approved this week, would allow a 19,000-strong African Union-UN joint peacekeeping force into Sudan shortly. The other elements are an immediate ceasefire in Sudan and a revived peace process backed up by the "carrot" of economic aid and the "stick" of sanctions if the process stalls.

Downing Street said Mr Brown was likely to raise the issue of the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which Britain wants closed, but he is unlikely to denounce it in public.

Despite reports that Dick Cheney, the hawkish US Vice-President, wants military strikes against Iran, British sources say that there is no sign of any imminent military action.

The Prime Minister invoked the spirit of Winston Churchill as he extolled the virtues of the UK-US relationship ­which he described as "the historic partnership of shared purpose".

Describing himself as an "Atlanticist", Mr Brown said: "It is firmly in the British national interest that we have a strong relationship with the US, our single most important bilateral relationship." The partnership was "rooted in something more fundamental and lasting than common interests or even a common history."

He quoted Churchill's statement about the two nations' "joint inheritance", which also included "the great principles of freedom and the rights of man."

Without using the phrase "war on terror", Mr Brown praised America's "resilience and bravery" after the 9/11 attacks, which showed that "while buildings can be destroyed values are indestructible. "

After a joint press conference with President Bush at Camp David today, Mr Brown will meet Democratic and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill. Tomorrow, he will signal his support for a multilateral foreign policy by speaking to the UN in New York.

On the agenda

* IRAQ

The long-term future of Western troops in Iraq and the speed with which the British contingent is withdrawn from the south of the country.

* AFGHANISTAN

How to counter the challenge from a resurgent Taliban.

* IRAN

The best way to cool the diplomatic temperature over Iran's nuclear weapons programme.

* DARFUR

The need to deploy international peacekeeping force to western region of Sudan.

* WORLD TRADE

Ending the deadlock that has stymied a global deal on trade.

* CLIMATE CHANGE

Persuading a sceptical US to join international efforts to combat global warming.

* DEFENCE CO-OPERATION

Britain has controversially allowed the US to use Menwith Hill base, in North Yorkshire, for a missile defence system.

    'Yo, Brown!': PM arrives for first talks with Bush, I, 30.7.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2816673.ece

Brown sets out sweeping

but risky terror and security reforms

· U-turn over single border force
· New plans to extend detention
· £70m hearts and minds campaign

Thursday July 26, 2007
Guardian
Patrick Wintour and Alan Travis

Gordon Brown moved yesterday to dominate the terror and security agenda, grabbing a Tory proposal for an integrated single border force and then challenging David Cameron to accept that the scale of the terrorist threat requires an extension of detention without charge to up to 56 days.

The move, announced in a ground-breaking Commons statement, follows months of discussions with police and security services on a range of measures, including post-charge questioning of suspects, the use of intercept evidence in court and a proposal that convicted terrorists be treated in the same way as sex offenders.

The scale of the proposals also holds political dangers for Mr Brown since they could damage his rapprochment with liberal Britain, started when he launched his package of constitutional measures in his first week as prime minister.

But Mr Brown insisted: "Liberty is the first and founding value of our country. Security is the first duty of our government."

The sweeping package of proposals unveiled by Mr Brown took in a £70m commitment to tackle extremism, with lessons on citizenship in Britain's 1,000 madrasas as part of a "hearts and minds" strategy to support Muslim community groups.

He revealed that police and the security services are tracking 2,000 individuals, an increase of 400 in the past nine months. A total of 900 shopping centres, sports stadiums and other areas where large crowds gather have been assessed by counter-terrorism advisers.

At the heart of the package was the announcement that the government would commit to a new unified border force to protect ports and airports, an idea championed by both opposition parties and persistently rejected as unworkable by the government.

Mr Brown spoke of a new "highly visible" uniformed border force, which would "strengthen the powers and surveillance of capability of our border guards and security officers" by bringing together the borders and immigration agency, Customs and the UK visas overseas operation. However, Conservative and Liberal Democrat opponents noted that it would not include the police. Nick Clegg, of the Liberal Democrats, dubbed it "border force lite".

The commitment to revisit the controversial detention without charge issue comes after police outlined the way big terrorism cases against one or two suspects can involve the time-consuming investigation of 200 phones, 400 computers, 8,000 CDs, 6,000 gigabytes of data and 70 premises across three continents. But human rights lawyers, some Muslim organisations and civil rights groups expressed disappointment that Mr Brown had decided to reopen the issue of detention without charge less than two years after Tony Blair's plans for 90-day detention were thrown out by the Commons.

Mr Blair was defeated by 33 votes in 2005; in a sign that Mr Brown is moving cautiously, he did not personally commit himself to 56 days yesterday, stressing that he was holding a consultation on up to 56 days. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, complained: "Lengthy periods of detention without charge failed in Northern Ireland and are counterproductive to providing intelligence for the police".

Amnesty likened the measures to internment.

Mr Cameron also refused to accept Mr Brown's claim that recent terrorist cases had demonstrated that police need more time to investigate detainees in complex international cases.

Sir Menzies Campbell, the Lib Dem leader, also refused to give ground: "We know that it is in the nature of the police to ask for more powers - for the best of motives but often for the worst of reasons. It is in the nature of government to grant such powers, and it should be in the nature of parliament to resist them."

David Winnick, who led the Labour rebellion in 2005, said: "Consensus was found on 28 days, so we should be hesitant about taking the controversial steps that divided the house nearly two years ago."

Privately, leading Labour rebels believe the backbench mood is wavering and 56 days will get through the Commons, but struggle in the Lords.

Mr Brown's surprise announcement of a unified border force follows a seven-year party political argument over border control. The effect will be seen next month, with travellers being greeted by uniformed officers staffing a "single primary checkpoint" for passport control and Customs.

Mr Brown made clear to MPs that this development was only the most visible aspect of the changes involved in accelerating Britain's "e-borders" programme with more checks of advance passenger lists on flights to Britain to enforce a "no-fly" policy for potential terrorists. The single force will lead to greater coordination, a common set of objectives, a common set of powers and a single command structure, the government said. A cabinet office review, to be led by Sir Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, will look at including the police in the force at a later date.

The package also includes new powers for MI5 to obtain information from other government agencies, tighter bail conditions of those suspected of lesser terror offences, a terrorist offender register and new powers to enter the properties of those under control orders.

    Brown sets out sweeping but risky terror and security reforms, G, 26.7.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,2134790,00.html

1.30pm update

Brown plans new border police

and longer detention limits

Wednesday July 25, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Haroon Siddique


Gordon Brown today put forward plans to double the current limit for detaining terror suspect without charge, from 28 days to 56 days.

The prime minister also set out to wrong-foot the Tories by proposing a unified border police force to combat terrorism and a review of the use of intercept evidence in court.

Mr Brown said an extended detention limit was necessary to sift through the volume of cases needed in terrorism cases.

He cited the example of the alleged airport bomb plot last August which involved investigation of 200 mobile phones, 400 computers, 70 homes and inquiries across three continents.

The prime minister said a proposal by Liberty to use the Civil Contingencies Act to detain suspects for a further 30 days would require a state of emergency to be declared and suggested that use of the act would send out the "opposite message" to that the government wished to convey.

Mr Brown said that extensions beyond 28 days would be subject to scrutiny by a high court judge and by parliament in specific cases.

Government plans to extend the detention limit to 90 days were defeated in November 2005.

Mr Brown called for support from the opposition on the new limit saying it would only be needed in cases that were "unusual, rare and only in the pursuit of terrorism".

But both David Cameron, the Tory leader, and Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat chief, asked for evidence of what had changed to justify a change in the law.

The Tories are likely to look more favourably on the creation of a unified border force, a policy they have been lobbying for.

"We will now merge the work of the border and immigration agencies with customs and establish a unified border force," Mr Brown said.

"The first change people will see is, starting from next month, when arriving at borders, airports or seaports, they will be made subject to a unified presence on primary checkpoint for security and customs."

He also announced another key plank of the Tories' security policy - the use of intercept evidence - would be looked at through a review by Sir John Chilcott with a view to "achieving a cross-party consensus".

Mr Brown also said that 4,000 foreign prisoners will have been deported by the end of the year, and that all foreign nationals staying in the UK for more than six months would be required to have biometric identification by the end of 2008.

    Brown plans new border police and longer detention limits, G, 25.7.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,2134416,00.html

1.15pm update

Brown announces fresh review

into cannabis classification

Wednesday July 18, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Haroon Siddique and Matthew Tempest

Gordon Brown today announced the second review in two years into whether cannabis should be reclassified, in response to concerns that its current status does not reflect the drug's dangers.

Mr Brown announced the review, which will look at whether cannabis should be reclassified as class B again - rather than its present class C - at prime minister's questions.

It was his second major policy announcement at PMQs in seven days, after last week announcing a U-turn on supercasinos.

While the Guardian revealed yesterday that a statement on crime reduction would be among a flurry of policy statements before parliament goes into recess next week, the announcement of another look at marijuana came as a surprise.

Mr Brown said that the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, would publish a consultation document next week to review drugs strategy.

"She will be asking the public to comment on new ways in which we can improve drugs education in the country, give support to people undergoing treatment ... and give support for communities who want to chase out drug dealers from their communities.

"As part of the consultation - and the cabinet discussed this yesterday - the home secretary will also consult on whether it is now right that cannabis should be moved from class C to class B."

Mr Brown was responding to Labour's Martin Salter, who wanted to see more prescriptions of cannabis-extract Savitex to people with multiple scelorsis.

Cannabis was class B before being downgraded to class C after a change in the law in 2004 under the then-home secretary, David Blunkett.

As a class B drug it would carry much more severe penalties for possession and imprisonment.

Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, called for cannabis to be reclassified in his Breakthrough Britain report published last week.

There have been particular concerns about skunk, a very potent form of cannabis which has been linked to mental health disorders.

In 2005, 10,000 11- to 17-year-olds were treated for cannabis use - 10 times the number a decade ago.

Plants are increasingly cultivated to include high levels of the active ingredient of cannabis, THC, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, which encourages addiction and can cause a range of symptoms, from short-term memory loss, anxiety and panic attacks to triggering schizophrenia.

Charles Clarke, the former home secretary, launched a review last year but concluded that there was no need to change the classification despite the changing medical advice.

    Brown announces fresh review into cannabis classification, G, 18.7.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,,2129179,00.html

Rowson        The Guardian        p. 28        16.7.2007

1.45pm

Brown restates commitment to US alliance

Friday July 13, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Mark Tran

Gordon Brown today insisted he would work closely with the Bush administration, after one of his cabinet allies hinted at a shift away from the US.

Mr Brown, who is scheduled to meet President George Bush in Washington in a few weeks' time, said Britain and the US would remain close.

"We will not allow people to separate us from the United States of America in dealing with the common challenges that we face around the world," Mr Brown told Radio Five Live. "I will continue to work, as Tony Blair did, very closely with the American administration."

Downing Street had earlier moved to dispel the impression that Britain was seeking to distance itself from the Bush administration, following a speech in the US by Douglas Alexander, the trade and development secretary.

Mr Alexander had called in his speech for the virtues of "soft power" to be recognised. He told an audience in Washington that nations had to build "new alliances" that "reach out to the world".

In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations which emphasised the importance of multilateralism as opposed to unilateralism, Mr Alexander said: "In the 20th century, a country's might was too often measured in what they could destroy. In the 21st century, strength should be measured by what we can build together. And so we must form new alliances based on common values, ones not just to protect us from the world, but ones which reach out to the world."

He added: "We need to demonstrate by our deeds, words and our actions that we are internationalist, not isolationist, multilateralist, not unilateralist, active and not passive, and driven by core values, consistently applied, not special interests."

The prime minister's spokesman rubbished suggestions in the press that the speech heralded a significant shift in relations between the UK and the US.

"I thought the interpretation that was put on Douglas Alexander's words was quite extraordinary," he said.

"To interpret this as saying anything at all about our relationship with the US is nonsense."

Mr Brown has spoken to Mr Bush three times since becoming prime minister, including a lengthy video conference call earlier this week.

He will make his first overseas trip as prime minister next week for talks with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, in Berlin. Shortly afterwards he will have talks in Paris with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. He will then go to Washington.

In an interview with the BBC, Mr Alexander said Britain's relationship with Washington was important as part of a wider framework.

"Gordon Brown has made very clear that he regards a strong relationship with the US as being one of the fundamental bases of his foreign policy," he said.

"But he also wants to see strong relationships with our partners within the European Union, and indeed growing and strong relationships with China and India, emerging powers in Asia."

    Brown restates commitment to US alliance, G, 13.7.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,,2125837,00.html

Brown message to US:

it's time to build, not destroy

Minister signals foreign policy shift ahead of PM's Washington trip

Friday July 13, 2007
Guardian
Patrick Wintour and Julian Borger

The first clear signs that Gordon Brown will reorder Britain's foreign policy emerged last night when one of his closest cabinet allies urged the US to change its priorities and said a country's strength should no longer be measured by its destructive military power.

Douglas Alexander, the trade and development secretary, made his remarks in a speech in America, the first by a cabinet minister abroad since Mr Brown took power a fortnight ago.

The speech represents a call for the US to rethink its foreign policy, and recognise the virtues of so-called "soft power" and acting through international institutions including the United Nations.

In what will be seen as an assertion of the importance of multilateralism in Mr Brown's foreign policy, Mr Alexander said: "In the 20th century a country's might was too often measured in what they could destroy. In the 21st century strength should be measured by what we can build together. And so we must form new alliances, based on common values, ones not just to protect us from the world, but ones which reach out to the world." He described this as "a new alliance of opportunity".

He added: "We need to demonstrate by our deeds, words and our actions that we are internationalist, not isolationist, multilateralist, not unilateralist, active and not passive, and driven by core values, consistently applied, not special interests."

With some neocons in the Bush administration nervous at the direction of Mr Brown's foreign policy, following the appointment of the former UN deputy secretary Lord Malloch-Brown as foreign minister, Mr Alexander went out of his way to underline the special relationship, but challenged the US and its partners "to recognise the importance of a rules based international system".

Mr Alexander's comments came at the end of a day in which President Bush had been forced to defend his policy in Iraq after a report on the effectiveness of the "surge" strategy concluded that the military situation had improved but political and economic targets had not been met.

Mr Brown is expected to fly to Washington shortly, and the groundwork for the trip is being prepared, with officials recognising the relationship between the new prime minister and George Bush will be very different from Mr Blair's.

In addition to Mr Alexander's speech, Simon McDonald, the prime minister's foreign policy adviser, is due to fly to Washington next week to meet Stephen Hadley, the US national security adviser. A Whitehall source said: "It will be more businesslike now, with less emphasis on the meeting of personal visions you had with Bush and Blair."

Another British official stressed that the US-UK "special relationship" was just as important to the new prime minister as it was to Mr Blair. However, the official added: "Bush and Blair went through 9/11 together. So maybe there is a difference." Last month, the outgoing foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, raised eyebrows in the Bush administration with a speech calling for total nuclear disarmament. It was made in consultation with, and with the approval of, Mr Brown. A British source in Washington said the Brown team was asserting its independence "one policy speech at a time", adding: "It's a smarter way of doing it than have a knockdown argument."

In Mr Alexander's speech, to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, he repeatedly argued that although terrorism and extremism sometimes had to be combated by force, victory would not be secured by military means alone.

"Given the interconnected nature of the challenges we face, I would argue that we have to simultaneously be fighting to end poverty, to secure trade justice and to tackle conflict and climate change, as well as working to defeat terrorism and ensure the preservation of our security."

Although Mr Blair also repeatedly highlighted the importance of climate change and global poverty, there is likely to be a greater willingness from the Brown government to speak bluntly to the Americans.

Mr Alexander also urged the US to remain engaged on issues such as climate change and Africa, saying: "There are few global challenge that do not require the active engagement of the US."

His remarks are designed to underline British determination that the US remains committed with other countries to forming a new UN-based agreement on the environment to replace the Kyoto treaty when it expires in 2012.

    Brown message to US: it's time to build, not destroy, G, 13.7.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,,2125375,00.html

2pm update

Brown outlines legislative programme

Wednesday July 11, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Deborah Summers and agencies


Gordon Brown today pledged to build 3m new houses by 2020 as he broke with centuries of tradition and gave MPs a preview of the Queen's speech.

Unveiling a blueprint for his first year in power, the prime minister put housing at the top of the political agenda as he announced plans for three new bills to tackle the shortage of affordable homes.

In a Commons statement lasting less than 10 minutes, Mr Brown also indicated that education and the health service would be priorities in the Queen's speech this autumn.

Defending the decision to announce his proposals before the state opening of parliament on November 6, the prime minister promised a series of region-by-region public consultations on the proposals before the programme was finalised.

Announcing new laws to overhaul the planning system and to encourage local authorities to provide more affordable housing, Mr Brown demanded a 25% increase in the number of new homes being built over the next 13 years, bring the total to 3m by 2020.

He said that the government would be releasing 550 publicly-owned, brownfield sites for housing development.

There will also be a new regime on "covered bonds" to help mortgage lenders finance 20- to 25-year fixed-rate mortgages.

In other measures, Mr Brown said that a new educational opportunity bill will require all young people to stay in education and training until the age of 18, while a pensions bill will require all employers to provide staff pension schemes.

The Queen's speech will also include a health and social care bill and a children in care bill as well as introducing new measures in the criminal justice bill which will be carried over into the next parliament.

And a constitutional reform bill will include measures to limit or surrender royal prerogative powers exercised by ministers - such as the power to make war.

The Tory leader, David Cameron, said that the statement sounded "very much like all the ones we have heard before".

"I know this is meant to be some great constitutional innovation, but I have to say most of what the prime minister announced sounds rather like the Queen's speech last year, the year before and the year before that," he said.

"A long list of bills, the same priorities and the same failures, and I have to say we've heard it all before...

"For 10 years, he has plotted and schemed for the top job, but all we have got is a sort of re-release of the 1997 manifesto. The country has moved on, but he simply hasn't."

However, the Tory leader promised to "work with the government" on anti-terror legislation, and called on Mr Brown to leave open the possibility that this autumn's Queen's speech would include measures to create a national border police force.

Earlier today, Mr Brown told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We are in a new world. People have a right to be consulted and involved. Therefore you have got to be outward looking.

"That's different from what people call 'sofa government' or what people call 'armchair government'. This is going out listening to the people."

Ahead of today's announcement, the new health minister, Sir Ara Darzi, told the Guardian of radical plans to transform the health service in London, with super-specialised health centres rather than general hospitals.

Mr Brown yesterday briefed the cabinet on his proposals saying that an "over-arching theme" would be meeting the aspirations of people in the three key areas of health, education and housing.

Mr Brown's spokesman said that the prime minister made his presentation to colleagues at an hour-long cabinet meeting yesterday.

Yvette Cooper, the housing minister, is expected to outline how reforms could help young families and first-time buyers, including possible reforms to the planning system and offering more public sector land for building plots.

The government has published a 50-page document outlining details of the bills to be included in the Queen's speech, which Mr Brown's spokesman said would include the main points of the proposed legislation.

    Brown outlines legislative programme, G, 11.7.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/gordonbrown/story/0,,2123591,00.html

On terror the rhetoric is different, not the reasoning

Brown is not about to throw the switch on the inherited essentials of Blair's approach to Washington or Iraq

Saturday July 7, 2007
The Guardian
Martin Kettle

Foul though they are, the failed car bombers have done the new government a huge favour. There was no terror emergency listed in Gordon Brown's long-prepared grid of July initiatives for seizing the political momentum for Labour. But the attempted bombings have provided the new prime minister with a perfect platform on which to pose as the national leader he strives to be.

The moderate language in which Brown and his ministers have responded to the week's emergency has been deliberately chosen - partly with an eye on the Southall byelection - and much commented upon. Yesterday's Islamispeace full page ads in this and other newspapers spoke for an undoubted wider welcome. The tone is calm. Inclusivity is in. Knee-jerk is out. It is the right response. Alongside Tuesday's constitutional package, it encourages even the proverbial fool in a hurry to sense that something has changed from the Tony Blair years.

But the difference should not be exaggerated and nor should it be misunderstood. It is easier to be statesmanlike after a failed attack than after a successful one. It may be true, as Eric Hobsbawm pointed out on the radio this week, that advanced modern states can absorb the kind of attacks meted out by terrorist groups fairly comfortably; but it remains true that the pressures on political leaders after an actual atrocity are more severe than when no one has been killed. It is also true that the potential carnage and collective impact of the alleged conspiracy against airline passengers that was apparently foiled last summer was arguably far greater than those that would have resulted if last weekend's car bombs had detonated. Not to recognise this is to equate apples with pears.

There is also a fair amount of rewriting of history going on. It is not actually true that the Blair government invariably responded to terror alerts by reaching for tough new powers. In fact it finally learned from its earlier mistakes, notably after 7/7, just as Brown has done. The much criticised John Reid never responded in this way as home secretary; on the only occasion he proposed new powers, only a few weeks ago, Reid's approach was impeccably consensual. Nor even did Blair, in spite of his precipitate reaction after 7/7, ever demonise the whole Muslim community to the extent that commentators, including the Muslim News editor Ahmed Versi on the World At One yesterday, claim. These are not, however, errors which Brown will hurry to correct. What matters politically is that the old perceptions that harmed him have been replaced by new ones that help.

If anyone over-reacted to the alert this week it was probably the Conservative opposition, with its demands for the immediate banning of Hizb ut-Tahrir. Labour ministers have never been slow to proscribe organisations that promote terror - more than 40 have been banned since 2000, and two more were added to the list only this week - and ministerial concern about this Islamist organisation is intense. But as Reid said in the Commons on Wednesday, though he twice asked for advice on whether he could ban Hizb last year, on both occasions the advice was that the organisation had curbed enough of its activities to make a ban legally doubtful. The compensation for the government is that legal organisations are easier to penetrate.

That is why I suspect David Cameron made another wrong call this week. He reasoned that Brown's more emollient language on the terror emergency betrayed a flakier approach to the subject as a whole. He therefore tried to create a partisan divide over toughness by calling for Hizb to be banned. But this misreads Brown's stance. For while he may have turned down the rhetoric, he has not altered the essentials of the policy. All the evidence is that Brown thinks we face a very long haul with Islamist terrorism and all the evidence, including the emerging background details of the car bomb plot, is that he is right.

Indeed, neither his words on the terrorist threat nor his comments this week on Iraq square in any way with the view that Brown is about to throw the switch unilaterally on the inherited essentials of the Blair policies in either sphere any time soon. Claims that Brown's Foreign Office appointments are a shot across Washington's bows betray wishful thinking; the fact is that when Brown himself went to the White House a few weeks ago, he went to tell Washington that he could be relied on.

That does not mean Brown likes the Iraq situation one bit. But his view, as he said to Menzies Campbell in the Commons only three days ago, is that Britain has obligations to the UN and Iraq that it is not going to break. The reality is that Britain is already in scaledown mode in Iraq and that the vital strategic decisions will be made by the US after the summer.

All the evidence is that Brown is currently where the mainstream of British voters are on these subjects. The voters don't want Britain to be in Iraq a moment longer than it has to be - and nor does Brown - but they see the moment of minimal deployment arriving in the months ahead and will therefore put up with the situation for a while longer. They continue to distinguish between Iraq and Afghanistan, and do not automatically recoil from a longer commitment to prevent the return of the Taliban. They recognise that Iraq has exacerbated the terror threat - of course it has - but they are not in denial about the reality that changes in British foreign policy, however desirable, will not make the terror threat disappear.

What we are witnessing, in other words, is not so much a change of policy. It is a change in the context in which the policy can be discussed and pursued more honestly. There is more realism in the air than there was. But we all need a dose of it. The government needs to find a way of accepting that Iraq has sharpened the terror threat. But the rest of us need to accept that the responsibility for attempting to murder civilians rests with those who carry out the atrocities. These were neither Blair's bombs nor Brown's bombs. They were the bombers' bombs and no one else's.

    On terror the rhetoric is different, not the reasoning, G, 7.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2120926,00.html

Brown's first PMQs - the verdict

While he is less nimble on his feet than his predecessor,
the new PM can be fairly happy with his performance today,
writes Michael White

Wednesday July 4, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

How did Gordon Brown cope with his first session of prime minister's question time? Quite well, I thought, though he lacks Tony Blair's affable charm - his talent for bullshit, if you prefer - and may always find it an ordeal.
Brown is heavier, but like any heavyweight champion he is also less nimble on his feet.

Don't underestimate how difficult this form of public accountability is. The Commons chamber is much smaller than it looks on TV.

When it is full, as it was today, it is a bear pit, MPs shouting encouragement or hurling scorn from all quarters.

All prime ministers find it hard, even Margaret Thatcher. Harold Wilson had a brandy; Harold Macmillan felt sick and that was before televised proceedings raised the stakes.

Mr Brown stumbled only when David Cameron pressed him hard to ban the radical Islamist group, Hizb ut-Tahir, because, the Tory leader claimed, it supports the murder of Jews. The new prime minister hesitated, then reminded his inquisitor: "I have been in this job for five days..."

Actually it's seven, but Mr Brown was often criticised for his maths as chancellor.

Generally speaking he answered sensibly and gave some of substance: NHS recruitment procedures, for instance, will be tightened and reviewed by new "big tent" recruit Admiral Sir Alan West - soon to be a minister in the Lords.

The other striking feature of the exchanges was that he constantly offered to discuss issues with the opposition parties and with the wider public - in the search for consensus on, for example, the use of telephone intercepts as evidence in court.

It remains a very tricky issue - as do most of the terror-related questions the Tory leader raised. Brown was cautious, but generally conciliatory, though he did lapse into Brown-ese when he taunted Mr Cameron that "an unfunded change means nothing at all" without extra cash which Tory tax policies may not find.

Ex-home secretary, John Reid, weighed in to show public support for his old Scottish sparring partner.

The generally conciliatory and inclusive formula was also deployed on local issues raised by MPs - local government reorganisation in Shrewsbury, for instance.

But willingness to talk was offset by steeliness on other controversies. Sir Ming Campbell urged the new broom to set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq and was told that the Brown government would fulfil its obligations to the UN and the Iraqi government.

Labour's Paul Flynn, another critic from the left, urged a similar course for Afghanistan where little progress is being made on reconstruction or on poppy crop eradication - yet 56 UK soldiers have been killed in the past year.

Same answer: a Nato mandate to build security, political reconciliation and reconstruction if the Taliban is to be held at bay, Mr Brown replied.

It was clear that both leaders - Sir Ming less so, but he is under pressure now - were trying to sound constructive and not be the first to resort to rough party politics. It couldn't last - and didn't.

When Mr Brown cited new Tory recruit, the ex-intelligence chief, Pauline Neville-Jones, as pro-ID cards, Mr Cameron quoted the normally cautious Alistair Darling's disdain for them (no date given) back at him.

The new PM seemed well briefed, over-briefed even, as he fought to get hostile balls back over the net. Sir Ming tried Iraq, nuclear power, green taxes and local income tax - and was batted back on them all.

But he did get in a good joke. When Mr Brown said: "my door is always open" to the Lib Dem leader, he replied that - after last week's "secret" talks - it looked more like a trapdoor than anything else. ' Early days for Mr Brown, of course, but no disaster today. He will have returned to No 10 much relieved and hoping it will get better.

Stop press

Since filing my lunchtime report on Gordon Brown's first PMQs, the media pack at Westminster has reached what may look like a consensus that Brown was a disaster. It happens that way sometimes, as it did the day David Cameron made his breakthrough speech in the leadership hustings at the 2005 Tory conference.

Cameron was good (so, unexpectedly, was Liam Fox), but not as stunning as TV correspondents told each other in the next hour or so. The newspapers felt obliged to follow suit, it was such a dramatic twist.

At PMQs Brown wasn't brilliant. But he was good enough. He was certainly nervous, his hands gripped the dispatch box and we were reminded by the way he parks his notes on two bound volumes of Hansard that he has only one good eye and not that good either.

He may never relish these duels or be a star. He's not an extrovert like Blair. But he wasn't a flop.

    Brown's first PMQs - the verdict, G, 4.7.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/gordonbrown/story/0,,2118318,00.html

3.15pm update

Brown expands terror checks on skilled migrants

Wednesday July 4, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Matthew Tempest, political correspondent


Security checks on skilled migrants such as NHS workers will be stepped up in the wake of the London and Glasgow car bomb plots, Gordon Brown announced today.

Eight people who work for, or have links with, the health service are currently being questioned in connection with last week's attacks.

In his first session of prime minister's questions, Mr Brown also pledged that the government would expand its worldwide "watchlist" of potential terrorists.

Although there is little detail yet on what greater background checks will entail, the new security minister, Lord West, is to carry out an immediate review of NHS recruitment in the wake of the attacks, Mr Brown announced.

Yesterday the Department of Health insisted that vetting was purely the business of the employer - namely the hospital or trust offering contracts to oversees doctors. However, that process focuses predominantly on checking qualifications, identity and any criminal convictions.

Mr Brown told MPs: "Let me tell you what we will do. We will expand the watchlist ... We will expand the background checks that are being done where there are highly skilled migrant workers coming into this country. When people sponsor them, we will ask them to give us their background checks.

"Thirdly, as a result of what has happened in the NHS, I've asked Lord West, the new terrorism minister, to conduct an immediate review as to what arrangements we must make in relation to recruitment to the NHS because of what we know has happened over the last few days.

"Finally, we will want to sign new agreements with other countries round the world so we act together to deal with the potential terrorist threat and we are able to deport people to countries, where they should be, rather than in this country.

Although the new PM called for "unity" and a cross-party consensus on terror, the Conservative leader, David Cameron, pushed for both a new national border police and the use of telephone taps in terrorist trials.

Mr Brown agreed to look into the issue of a border police force and pointed out that a privy council review into the feasibility of using telephone intercept evidence had already been commissioned. However, he criticised the Tories for opposing ID cards - as do the Liberal Democrats.

"It is vitally important the message is sent out to the rest of the world that we will stand strong, steadfast and united in the face of terror," he said.

Mr Brown was also put on the spot by Tory calls for the banning of the radical Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

When the new prime minister pointed out he had only been in the job "five days", Mr Cameron pointed out the Home Office had commissioned an inquiry into the group two years ago.

It was left to the former home secretary, John Reid, to spare Mr Brown's blushes from the backbenches by revealing that the inquiry had not come up with sufficient evidence.

The Hizb ut-Tahrir organisation later put out a statement, saying: "The former home secretary, John Reid, today confirmed in parliament ... there has been no evidence whatsoever to link Hizb ut-Tahrir to terrorism or violence.

It continued: "We completely reject David Cameron's playing of politics with security and his baseless accusation that our organisation calls for the killing of Jews.

"His accusations are not surprising given that Hizb ut-Tahrir has been an ardent critic of the Zionist state, while Cameron has described himself as a Zionist. Perhaps Mr Cameron has not, this time, jumped onto a bandwagon, but onto a sinking ship."

    Brown expands terror checks on skilled migrants, G, 4.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2118328,00.html

The battle over government

that has raged since Magna Carta

Published: 04 July 2007
The Independent
By Ben Chu

Yesterday Mr Brown referred to the British Constitution as "unwritten". That is misleading. A more accurate description would be "un-codified". In common with the citizens of other countries, subjects of the British Crown enjoy certain legally prescribed rights and freedoms. And like the governments of other nations, British administrations are bound by the chains of law and convention.

The difference is that the various Royal Charters, Acts of Parliament and legal rulings that make up the framework of proper British governance have never been gathered and written down in a single legal document in the style of, for example, the Constitution of the US.

Up until the 19th century, the history of the British constitution was, in large part, the history of the struggle for power between the monarch and the aristocracy. In 1215 a coalition of disgruntled barons forced King John to sign the Magna Carta (or Great Charter), left, guaranteeing the right for freemen to be judged, not by the king, but their peers. The monarch was also forced to pledge that "to no one will we deny or delay right or justice", a significant undertaking at a time when rulers enjoyed power unchecked by formal commitments.

The dispute over the limits of royal power rumbled on over the following centuries but it exploded again with great force in the 17th century during the reign of King Charles I. A period of turmoil culminated in the so-called "Glorious Revolution". In 1688, a collection of peers deposed James II and invited Prince William of Orange and his wife Mary to become joint sovereigns on the condition that they acquiesce to some rigid restrictions on the power of the monarchy and guarantees of the rights of parliament. This settlement was enshrined in the Bill of Rights, which guaranteed freedom of speech, frequent parliaments and free elections. This settlement, perhaps more than anything else before or since, was the basis for our system of parliamentary sovereignty. But still only a minority of rich men were entitled to vote. It took a succession of reform acts to widen the franchise.

    The battle over government that has raged since Magna Carta, I, 4.7.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2733250.ece

Britons Cheer Brown for Attacks Response

July 3, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:15 p.m. ET
The New York Times

LONDON (AP) -- Gordon Brown doesn't do charisma. In contrast to Tony Blair, the new British leader has offered no emotive sound bites, no promises of tough new laws and no talk of a ''war on terror'' since the failed attacks in London and Glasgow.

The stern Scot's few public statements have been somber, measured and brief. Many Britons welcome the change, saying the lower-key approach may better reassure a rattled nation and prevent racial tensions from exploding.

''We need to be calm about it,'' said Duncan Walls, 64, a retired lawyer walking through a London on ''critical'' terror alert after Friday's failed double car-bombing and Saturday's fiery Jeep attack on Glasgow airport.

''I'm glad to say the abrasiveness of Blair and (former Home Secretary John) Reid, in particular, is no longer evident,'' he added.

Brown's response to the attacks has won praise from allies and foes alike.

On Tuesday, the head of the Muslim Council of Britain, Muhammad Abdul Bari, lauded Brown and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith for the ''calm and reassuring tone of their responses to the recent attacks.''

Nick Clegg, home affairs spokesman for the opposition Liberal Democrats, welcomed the change from ''the somewhat breathless way Tony Blair used to always rush to try to make, frankly, political points on the back of these events.''

In a crisis, Blair could always be counted on for a memorable turn of phrase. After the death of Princess Diana, he extolled her as ''the people's princess.''

Hours after four suicide bombers killed 52 London bus and subway passengers on July 7, 2005, Blair delivered a speech with echoes of Winston Churchill, vowing: ''When they try to intimidate us, we will not be intimidated ... we will not be changed.''

Brown's message -- in one brief televised statement and a longer TV interview -- can be summarized as ''keep calm and carry on.'' Speaking in the gruff Scottish brogue that is his trademark, he said the country faced a ''sustained'' threat and urged Britons to ''stand together, united, resolute and strong.''

He has largely remained behind the scenes, leaving public briefings to police and senior officials. Brown chaired a meeting of the government's emergency committee Saturday, but left later meetings to Smith -- who as home secretary is equivalent to Britain's interior minister -- and other officials.

The low-key Smith also stands in contrast to her pugnacious predecessor, John Reid, whose tough talk on terrorism was sometimes criticized for inflaming ethnic and religious tensions. In a speech to lawmakers Monday, Smith called terrorists ''criminals whose victims come from all walks of life, communities and religious backgrounds.'' Brown has spoken of ''al-Qaida'' attackers but not of ''Islamic'' or ''Muslim'' terrorists.

Instead of announcing new anti-terror legislation -- as Blair and Reid did after the July 7 bombings -- Brown has said he wants to work with opposition politicians to build a consensus on what steps to take.

''This is not the time for rushing into new legislation,'' said Brown's official spokesman, Michael Ellam.

There is evidence the public approves of Brown's cautious approach.

''I'm impressed with the fact that (Brown) and Jacqui Smith speak pretty calmly,'' said Londoner James Freeman, 32. ''They're focusing on terrorists as criminals, rather than people of a religious persuasion. I think (Brown) is going to continue to stand firm.''

An opinion poll released Tuesday gave Brown's Labour Party the support of 37 percent of respondents, up four points from a month earlier and three points ahead of the opposition Conservatives.

Seventy-seven percent of those polled considered Brown a strong leader, up 14 points from a month ago.

Polling firm Populus interviewed 1,504 adults by telephone between Friday -- the day of the London attack -- and Sunday. The margin of error is plus or minus two percentage points.

Brown biographer Tom Bower cautioned that even if there are no more terrorist attacks, Brown's honeymoon is likely to be brief. Brown's decade as Blair's Treasury chief and right-hand man will make it hard for him to set himself apart, he said.

''The nation rallies round him, rightly, and party politics is suspended at a time like this,'' Bower said. ''The real Brown, the vulnerable Brown, will emerge after the summer. The test will come when politics resume in the autumn.''

Associated Press Writer Lindsay Toler contributed to this report.

    Britons Cheer Brown for Attacks Response, NYT, 3.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Britain-Testing-Brown.html

4.45pm update

Brown sets out plans

to cede powers to parliament

Tuesday July 3, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Laura Smith and agencies

Gordon Brown today vowed to give MPs the final word in declaring war as he unveiled a new "constitutional settlement" to ensure government was a "better servant of the people".

In his first speech to the House of Commons as prime minister, Mr Brown said that there would be a new ministerial code of conduct, that the attorney general would withdraw from key prosecution decisions, and that MPs representing Scottish seats would continue to be allowed to vote on English-only matters.

But, on the controversial issue of war, the new prime minister reiterated his promise to limit the powers of the executive, adding: "On the grave issue of peace and war it is ultimately this House of Commons that will make the decision."

Mr Brown said that his reforms would rest on two fundamental principles: to hold those in power more accountable and to enhance the rights and responsibilities of citizens.

To this end, he said he would transfer or limit the powers of the prime minister and the executive in a number of areas, including the power to request the dissolution or recall of parliament, ratify international treaties and appoint bishops and judges.

Parliament would also play a bigger role in the appointment of "key public officials", including the governor of the Bank of England, the chief inspector of prisons and utility regulators.

In what some will see as an attempt to distance himself from the controversy over the attorney general's role in the cash-for-honours affair, Mr Brown said that, in future, the attorney general would withdraw from key prosecution decisions unless required by the law or national security.

Mr Brown will create a national security council "sending out a clear message that at all times we will be vigilant and we will never yield". A national security strategy will also be published regularly, setting out threats and objectives.

Mr Brown stressed that his proposals were not a "final blueprint" but a route map towards it, subject to consultation with all political parties and the general public. The proposals were "essential to our country's future", he said, and they would make for "a more open, 21st-century democracy which better serves the British people".

The Conservative leader, David Cameron, welcomed aspects of Mr Brown's proposals, including the formation of a national security council.

But he questioned whether Mr Brown was the person to restore public trust in the political process.

Mr Cameron told the house: "[Mr Brown] says he wants to restore public trust, but he has been at the heart of the government that has done more than any other government in living memory to destroy public trust.

"That's why, when it comes to restoring public trust in government we simply don't see that he can be the change that this country needs."

He said that, as chancellor, Mr Brown had had imposed thousands of government targets, which went against his apparent stance on decentralisation, consistently refused to answer questions from parliament on the tax credit system, for which he was responsible, and opposed a public inquiry on Iraq.

He added: "The constitution is not the cause of broken trust, it is broken promises that are the cause of broken trust.

"People will ask how the person who broke this trust can be the person to mend it."

Mr Cameron challenged the prime minister to stop MPs representing Scottish constituencies from voting on laws that apply in England only - the so-called West Lothian question - a proposal Mr Brown rejected.

The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Menzies Campbell, condemned the prime minister's refusal to address the West Lothian question but broadly welcomed Mr Brown's "comprehensive statement".

In particular, Sir Menzies praised proposals for greater transparency for the intelligence and security services, but said that the powers of parliament to vote on peace and war should be put on a statutory footing.

He added: "Reform of our constitution is long overdue. The United Kingdom deserves a constitution fit for the standards and challenges of contemporary Britain."

He said that such reforms had to be "innovative and inclusive" and that his party would give a "considered response" to Mr Brown's green paper.

The new prime minister had been expected to set out his plans for constitutional reform yesterday, but the announcement was delayed in the aftermath of the attempted car bombings in London and Glasgow.

Earlier today, the cabinet broke with 44 years of tradition as the prime minister held the first of what will be regular Tuesday meetings.

He has moved the meeting from the Thursday slot it has occupied since 1963, saying he wanted a more consensual style of government with meetings regularly lasting for more than an hour.

Mr Brown's new government was given a boost today when a new poll showed Labour had enjoyed a four-point increase in popularity since he became prime minister last week.

The survey, carried out by Populus for the Times, revealed the party was back above the Tories with a three-point lead - 37% compared to the Conservatives' 34%.

    Brown sets out plans to cede powers to parliament, G, 3.7.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/commons/story/0,,2117348,00.html

4.30pm

Brown's key pledges: at a glance

Tuesday July 3, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Deborah Summers, politics editor

Gordon Brown's 12 key pledges to transfer power from the executive to parliament:

1. The power to declare war

2. The power request the dissolution of parliament

3. The power to recall parliament

4. The power to ratify international treaties

5. The power to appoint key public officials including the governor of the Bank of England, chief inspector of prisons and utility regulators

6. The power to appoint bishops and judges

7. A new national security council will regularly publish a national security strategy, setting out threats and objectives

8. The attorney general will withdraw from key prosecution decisions unless required by the law or national security

9. A new ministerial code will be drawn up with a new independent advisor to supervise disclosure and scrutinise conduct

10. MPs to vote on legislation flowing from the European Union amending treaty

11. A public debate on the case for a British bill of rights or a written constitution

12. The government to consult on changing the laws that restrict the right to demonstrate in Parliament Square.

Mr Brown also pledged a statement before the summer recess on reform of the House of Lords.

    Brown's key pledges: at a glance, G, 3.7.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/gordonbrown/story/0,,2117592,00.html

Changing politics (again)

July 3, 2007 3:50 PM
The Guardian
Martin Kettle

Too many people in the Labour party still think that pluralism is a form of lung disease. Not my joke, I'm sorry to admit, but that of the pro-constitutional reform backbencher, Graham Allen.

Even today, as he announces a programme of changes to the workings of British politics, government and democracy, a lot of Labour MPs will be mystified that Gordon Brown has chosen to play the constitutional reform card at a moment of such potential in his brief premiership. Why can't he give priority to something for "our people", they will ask themselves.

Many of the MPs sitting behind Mr Brown secretly agree with Neil Kinnock's unguarded comment from long ago that the reformers are "whiners, whingers and wankers". Or with Roy Hattersley's one-time view that since "true liberty requires action from the government" the adoption of a written constitution "actually prevents or inhibits that action from being taken".

That's one reason why it is important to remind ourselves that Gordon Brown and constitutional reform actually go back quite a long way. I've been rereading Mr Brown's Charter88 lecture on the subject from March 1992, and though there are plenty of things in that lecture that the prime minister might not say today -- the invocation of democratic socialism for one -- there is also a lot that he would still be very comfortable asserting 15 years on.

Not the least of these is the lecture's opening sentence, in which Mr Brown places constitutional change "at the heart of the debate about the future of our country". Later he stresses that constitutional change has to be more than "a shopping list of attractive ideas". It must, he counters, be placed "within a framework of belief about Britain as a community". In the meat of the lecture Mr Brown calls for "a servant state" answerable to a sovereign people, for a statutory Bill of Rights, for reform of the judiciary, for reform of the security services and for a reformed House of Lords. There is a lot in his lecture about devolution and there is an early airing for the idea that select committees should scrutinise key public appointments to reduce the patronage of the prime minister.

But in some ways the most important idea is Mr Brown's comment that "I assume an active role for government. But where I invoke the need for government I have a special responsibility to ensure its accountability."

That thought is still very strong in Mr Brown today in 2007. He wants his government to do many things to make this a more just and a more modern society, but he fears that government is held in such contempt and low esteem that it is politically difficult to attempt them. The answer is to challenge the contempt, low esteem and distrust by making government more accountable and by ensuring that government acts in a humbler and more dignified way.

That is what today's announcement is really about. Mr Brown is not a constitutional reformer because he is obsessed with reform for reform's sake, but because he sees it as a means to legitimating the more challenging acts of government in advancing economic justice, integrated communities and international (including European) cooperation. For Mr Brown, constitutional reform is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

    Changing politics (again), G, 3.7.2007, http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/martin_kettle/2007/07/changing_politics_again.html

KEEP FLYING IN THE FACE OF TERROR, GORD

02/07/2007
The Daily Mirror
Tony Parsons

STILL feel like giving Tony Blair a standing ovation? The man is history and the rest of us must live with his catastrophic legacy.

Car bombs outside London clubs. A burning Jeep embedded in the smashed doors of Glasgow airport. And the unforgettable image of a terrorist in flames attempting to ignite explosives while an off-duty cop hoses him him down with water - one man attempting to commit mass murder while another man tries to save his life.

Now that's what I call a clash of civilisations.

As Blair himself would tell you, there was terrorism long before the ex-Prime Minister conned us into invading Iraq. That is true enough - but it is Iraq that has torn apart the fabric of our multicultural society, it is Iraq that hangs like a toxic cloud over this nation, it is Iraq that poisons everything.

But cursing Blair solves nothing. He can go off to the American lecture circuit, and to his post as a Middle East peace envoy - which is a lot like getting Adolf Hitler to organise a Bar Mitzvah.

Blair got us into this mess. It is the new Prime Minister who will have to get us out.

And perhaps that is impossible. Islamic terrorism is like a chronic disease - always there. It can't be cured - it can only be fought, and lived with, and endured.

The disease flames up at certain moments. The knighthood of Salman Rushdie, the start of the Scottish school holidays, a change of Prime Minister - the sick minds of the terrorists see all these things as reasons to slaughter innocent men, women and children.

But terrorism doesn't goes away. So what does Gordon Brown do? What do we all do?

We don't panic. That would be a good start. The irony of many terrorist attacks is that they often reveal humanity at its very best.

THESE despicable acts of cruelty and cowardice often reveal the courage, the decency and the selflessness of ordinary people.

In Glasgow there was maintenance worker John Smeaton.

Confronted by a man in flames from head to foot and attacking a stunned policeman while screaming, 'Allah! Allah! Allah!', John gave the terrorist a good right-hander.

In London it was the unlikely figure of wheel-clamper Ispan Chowdhury, who discovered the Mercedes packed with gas cylinders, petrol and nails outside the Park Lane car pound. And in London it was the policeman who cut the wires of the car bomb outside Tiger Tiger minutes before it would have exploded.

Ordinary men performing extraordinary acts of bravery.

That is the lesson we should learn from the past few days. These men - the airport worker, the wheel-clamper, the cop - were calm and brave and genuinely heroic when they must have been terrified.

Too often our reaction to terrorism has been hysteria. But if we increase security to the level where many people are not able to get on with their lives, then we are losing the war.

As a Londoner, I know many Muslims. There is not one of them who is not a decent, compassionate human being.

But I suspect that there is not one of them that does not have grievances - about Iraq, about being treated like second-class citizens, about what they see as gratuitous insults to their faith. They feel vulnerable. But so do the rest of us.

Gordon Brown's challenge is to win the hearts and minds of the decent majority of Muslims, and annihilate the others - the ones who think they can please their god by murdering children going on holiday, the ones who think women who go to clubs are 'slags', the ones who despise the country that gives them a home yet seem reluctant to go anywhere else.

Of course we must be vigilant. But not so hysterically vigilant that we are unable to go about our daily lives.

We are winning if we go to work, and go on holiday and girls continue to dance around their handbags without provoking suicide attacks.

But as the culture of Baghdad is brought to London and Glasgow, this is Gordon Brown's first great test.

Can the new Prime Minister keep the planes flying?

    KEEP FLYING IN THE FACE OF TERROR, GORD, DMi, 2.7.2007, http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/columnists/parsons/

Andreas Whittam Smith:

A measured response that bodes well for the future

Where Tony Blair's team was hyperactive, Mr Brown has instilled calm

Published: 02 July 2007
The Independent

Something has changed already. Immediately following the terrorist attacks in the capital, Jacqui Smith, appointed Home Secretary only the day before, gave the Government's first response rather than the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. Mr Brown's own statements have been short and dignified. At Scotland Yard, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke has provided fluent briefings while the Commissioner, the accident-prone Sir Ian Blair, has kept out of the way.

Where Tony Blair's team was hyperactive, Mr Brown has instilled calm. Allowing the Gay Pride march to go ahead in central London on Saturday also demonstrated unflappability.

Here is another novelty: by tomorrow evening the new cabinet will have met three times in four working days, with each session lasting about two hours. That is as much time as Mr Blair needed in a month. In future, cabinet meetings will be held on Tuesday mornings instead of Thursdays to allow more space for discussion. Cynics may say that this change is more apparent than real, for Mr Brown is likely to be dominant. Let us wait and see. Making a reality of cabinet responsibility for Government decisions, if that is what happens, would be to erect a barrier against overweening prime ministerial power.

Mr Brown is to announce proposals for reforming more of Britain's constitutional arrangements this afternoon in the House of Commons. The first test of his intentions will, paradoxically, have been completed by the time he stands up. Has the material already been leaked to the media? If it has, then any statements about restoring the authority of Parliament will need to be treated cautiously. With this in mind, I scrutinised the weekend press carefully. Only the Sunday Times had what appeared to be a well-sourced story.

Whatever else is included in the Prime Minister's statement, two subjects seem to me to be essential. The first is to complete the unfinished business of the 1997 reforms. This would require settling the composition of the House of Lords and its method of appointment. And it would mean dealing with an issue that is beginning to appear scandalous: devolution. For it looks as if the Scottish Parliament is providing more generous social services than are available to people living in England solely because English taxpayers supply a cash subsidy to Scottish taxpayers. In other words, the impression is that the Scots are sticking their hands into English pockets. It would be dangerous to let this go uncorrected.

The second essential is to repair the machinery of government. No more departments of state should have to be declared unfit for purpose, as the Home Office was said to be by its then Secretary of State, John Reid. No longer, to take another example, should the Treasury, as it did in Mr Brown's time, both underpay and overpay tax credits to poor families and then seek to make good the mistakes, causing untold misery in the process. Some £6bn has been lost in this way since 2003. Never again, to take a recent instance, should a well-tried system for selecting doctors for training be replaced by an online form-filling exercise in which their academic records and experience count for very little - which the Secretary of State was forced to withdraw after defending unworkable plans.

Constitutional arrangements, with their many moving parts and varying relationships, are like the engine of a car. So long as the vehicle is running along nicely, few people are interested enough to lift the bonnet and study the pistons and valves. But once the car begins to splutter, or even develop a tendency to swerve off the road, then dealing with mechanical faults becomes a priority. Mr Brown understands this. And that is why constitutional reform is the subject of his first statement as Prime Minister to the House of Commons.

At the same time, the malfunctioning of our government and political system has stimulated an enormous number of private initiatives. On the internet, I keep in touch with OpenDemocracy, a website on global current affairs, (www.opendemocracy.org.uk) and its useful offshoot, OurKingdom. Various campaign groups, including the Electoral Reform Society, Unlock Democracy and Make-It-An-Issue, have taken out full-page advertisements in newspapers to highlight their cause. A Citizens' Convention Bill, published last week, attracted cross-party sponsorship.

MyForeignPolicyToo asks who should decide when it comes to war, peace and diplomacy. The Conservatives, led by Ken Clarke MP, have published their own reform proposals and so have the Lib Dems. The Power Inquiry has been in the field since 2004. It explores how political participation and involvement can be increased and deepened in Britain. Its recommendations spring from its view that a healthy democracy requires the active participation of its citizens.

In his statement, Mr Brown is likely to range much more widely than the few issues I have marked as essential. If he does embrace the drawing up of a bill of rights, the transfer of the old royal powers from the prime minister of the day to Parliament, including the decision to go to war, the confirmation by MPs of appointments to key public posts, then, by his fifth day in office, the Prime Minister would have taken decisions that would command a permanent place in the history books. Something would indeed have changed and, for my taste, very much for the better.

    Andreas Whittam Smith: A measured response that bodes well for the future, I, 2.7.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_m_z/andreas_whittam_smith/article2727869.ece

His agenda has been blown apart,

but new PM is unshaken

Published: 02 July 2007
The Independent
By Colin Brown

Gordon Brown's first few days in office were not supposed to be like this. Typically, a meticulous approach had been taken that would have set the tone for his term. Today his Government was due to announce sweeping constitutional changes to enhance the role of Parliament.

All that will have to wait now. For bombers, who plotted to cause mayhem and death with their deadly cocktail of gas canisters and petrol bottles, also blew apart Brown's agenda.

Instead of the listening to constitutional plans MPs will today hear a statement from Jacqui Smith, the new Home Secretary, who is also facing a critical test of her mettle, updating them on the police investigation to smash the suspected terrorist cells who plotted the car bomb attacks.

The office of Prime Minister has lunged at Gordon Brown. Within 24 hours of taking over, three soldiers were killed in Basra, including two from his own constituency in Fife. Now this. So far, though, the firm approach that in the past made him appear dour seems to be serving him well.

Brown's baptism of fire has seen him take personal charge of the emergency Cobra committee and put Britain on "critical" alert for more terrorist attacks.

Blairite ministers had feared Mr Brown's style would be a disadvantage at times when the public glare was on him, but yesterday in his first major interview his gravitas showed through. Speaking to fellow Scot, Andrew Marr, for the BBC AM programme, the Prime Minister's naturally serious demeanour emphasised the threat facing Britain and may have enhanced his leadership, which has already produced a "Brown bounce" in the polls for Labour.

Even some of his critics were impressed by the calm, determined way he managed the crisis without headline grabbing phrases so closely associated with his predecessor Tony Blair.

In the Cabinet reshuffle last week, Mr Brown brought two terrorist experts into the government. He could not have guessed his judgement would be put to the test and vindicated within 48 hours. In a surprise appointment, he brought in the former First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Alan West - a hero of the Falklands War and a critic of Mr Brown's cuts in defence spending - as his minister for terrorism at the Home Office. He also recruited the former Metropolitan Commissioner, Lord Stevens as an adviser on terrorism and brought all spending on anti-terror measures into one budget.

Mr Brown walked into No 10 promising change. Mr Brown had intended his interview to show a striking difference with his predecessor, saying in a deliberate sideswipe at Mr Blair there would be no so-called "sofa government".

At one of its first meetings last week, the Cabinet had a lengthy debate about his plans for constitutional change. They include giving MPs the right to a vote before he can take this country to war again.

    His agenda has been blown apart, but new PM is unshaken, I, 2.7.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2727850.ece

Leading article:

The need for calm, caution and intelligence

Published: 02 July 2007
The Independent

As we approach the second anniversary of the London bombings, Britain is once again is in a state of high alert. Saturday's attack on Glasgow airport seems to have been carried out by the same group that planted two car bombs in central London last week. It seems wise for the authorities - and, indeed, the public - to prepare for the possibility that there could be more attacks to come.

This, of course, represents a baptism of fire for the new Prime Minister. It is encouraging that Gordon Brown had the presence of mind to point out yesterday that our response to the threat of terrorism must include measures to win the "hearts and minds" of ordinary Muslims. In the past, ministers have responded to terrorist alerts by focusing exclusively on questions of security. In fact, the way to defeat this modern scourge is by separating the minority of extremists from the moderate majority. However secretive they are, terrorists cannot operate in a vacuum. There will be those around them who suspect, or know, that something dreadful is being planned. It should be a central objective of the Government and the authorities to encourage those who have this information to come forward.

It is also welcome that Mr Brown stressed that people should "carry on living their lives as normal". There is nothing to be gained from bringing the country to a halt. This need for calm applies especially to community relations. It would be a double disaster if these attempted attacks resulted in a backlash against law-abiding Islamic communities in Britain.

However, it is ominous that Mr Brown also spoke of "tougher security measures". It is vital that the Prime Minister does not rush through new repressive anti-terror laws. Mr Brown warned of the need for enhanced security measures at airports and crowded public places, and we have been told to expect extra police patrols and more checks on cars. Such measures are clearly reasonable under the circumstances.

But there are also signs that Mr Brown plans to use these attacks to justify an increase in the amount of time a suspect can be detained without charge by the police. Here, it is vital that our political leaders pause for thought. The arguments against extended detention are as powerful as they were when the Government first proposed it two years ago. As well as being an unwarranted assault on our civil liberties, extended detention has the potential to alienate those very communities whose help the police need to foil future terror plots.

There is another lurking danger with respect to the Government's response to these attacks. Mr Brown rightly argued yesterday that "we have got to recognise what the nature of the threat that we are dealing with is". But does he properly understand it? The Prime Minister spoke of the terrorists' "grievance against society, particularly against the values that we represent". But he made no reference to the boost that Britain's military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have given to the jihadists' propaganda and recruitment efforts.

Much of the evidence collected on home-grown extremists over the past six years suggests they are brainwashed, through a combination of twisted theology and selected evidence of military interventions around the world, into believing that the West is waging a war of oppression against Muslims. That is a different thing from a simple hatred of "our values". And it requires a much subtler policy response from the Government.

Unless Mr Brown moves on from the simple-minded analysis of his predecessor regarding the motivation of these terrorists - and in the measures necessary to contain the threat - he risks making the same mistakes all over again.

    Leading article: The need for calm, caution and intelligence, I, 2.7.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2727864.ece

Brown's message to terrorists:

'We will not be intimidated.

Terror will not undermine our way of life'

Published: 02 July 2007
The Independent
By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor

Gordon Brown delivered an uncompromising message to Islamic extremists behind the car bomb plots in London and Glasgow yesterday that Britain "will not yield" to terrorism, but warned of stringent security measures and continued disruption across the country.

There was speculation the bombers may have been trying to put pressure on the new Prime Minister after the departure of Tony Blair to speed the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq. But Mr Brown said he would not change course.

"We will not yield, we will not be intimidated," the Prime Minister said. "It's very important that people carry on living their lives as normal. It's very important that we, the British people, send a message to terrorists that they will not be allowed to undermine our British way of life."

The alert state was raised to "critical", signalling the threat of further terrorist attacks was imminent, after Mr Brown chaired a meeting of Cobra, the emergency planning committee.

Mr Brown said tighter security across Britain could cause disruption with longer queues at airports, and police checks in "crowded places" such as city centres and rail stations. Drivers may also be delayed for roadside checks for explosive devices.

MPs' staff and government officials returning to the Palace of Westminster and Whitehall for work today face lengthy queues, as bomb checks are imposed on workers in spite of their security passes.

Mr Brown said: "I've got to appeal to members of the public to understand that when we've had an attempted attack an airport, the security measures have to be increased. Whether it's checks as people go into the airports or whether its also more police patrols, or whether it may be barriers people have to come through, these will be on the basis of an assessment made on the ground for particular airports.

"We have got to take measures in crowded places and you will see a greater police presence and you will see in some cases further measures to enhance security there. And people may expect checks of cars."

The terrorist attacks forced Mr Brown to postpone a statement scheduled for today on sweeping constitutional changes, including giving Parliament a right to a vote on Britain going to war. He is planning controversial measures in an anti-terrorism Bill inherited from Mr Blair. The Bill will reopen the row over 90-day detention of suspects without charge. But senior officials said Mr Brown wants to avoid it being seen as a "knee-jerk" reaction to the weekend attacks.

Mr Brown has already had talks with David Cameron, the Tory leader, on anti-terrorism legislation to try to seek a consensus. William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, hinted the Tories may be prepared to move on their objection to an extension of 28-day detention.

The Tories suggested privy councillors should investigate using phone tap evidence in terrorist cases, which has been resisted by the intelligence services, and Mr Brown has ordered the review There is also cross-party support for suspects to be questioned after they are charged.

Mr Brown rejected claims that the war in Iraq had contributed to the terrorist attacks in Britain. "The terrorist threat is long term and it's sustained. It is about those people who are essentially violent extremists who have a grievance against society, particularly against the values that we represent and the values that decent people in all religions represent. It is their intention to inflict the maximum of damage in any part of the world to make their propaganda point. Of course we want greater peace and security in Iraq and Afghan-istan. Making progress in the Middle East with Palestine and Israel will make a difference."

He added: "Anybody I talk to, a leader in any part of the world, knows we're dealing with a long-term threat unrelated in detail to one specific point of conflict in the world, but is a general view that is held by a group of terrorist extremists about the shape of the world they want to create."

Mr Brown compared the battle against Islamic extremism to the ideological battle by the West against Communism. "We've got to separate those great moderate members of our community from a few extremists who wish to practise violence and inflict maximum loss of life in the interest of the perversion of their religion." It would require action to win "hearts and minds" as well as security and military measures, he said. "That's why the cultural effort, similar to what happened during the Cold War in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, when we had to mount a propaganda effort to explain to people that our values represented the best of commitments to individual dignity to liberty and to human life being taken seriously. And that's what we are going to have to talk about in the next few years."

The celebrity concert in memory of Diana, the Princess of Wales, went ahead at Wembley with the Princes William and Harry present.

    Brown's message to terrorists: 'We will not be intimidated. Terror will not undermine our way of life' , I, 2.7.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2727849.ece

Terror alert

On Sunday 01 July Andrew Marr

interviewed The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown MP

Last Updated: Sunday, 1 July 2007
09:51 GMT 10:51 UK
BBC Sunday AM

GORDON BROWN: It's obvious we're dealing with a terrorist threat.

We've been dealing with it for some time.

We've known it's long term, we've known it's sustained.

We know that such attacks like these can happen at any time.

And let me first of all praise the extraordinary vigilance of the public.

It has been the vigilance of the public in both London and Glasgow that has made a huge difference and avoided loss of life.

And I think the response of the police and the emergency services has been something that does huge credit to our country and I'm very proud of what they've managed to do.

The explosive experts I've already met and of course people in Glasgow as well where we've had the arrests.

And I think now we also see that the police are in a fast moving operation. They've made enormous progress in a very short period of time.

ANDREW MARR: We're talking ... over night are we?

GORDON BROWN: We've already had some, some arrests. And again what we're seeing in Britain is when these attacks or these threats happen the public, the police, the emergency services, the security services all come together and it makes me very proud that we have people in Britain that are prepared to respond with such professionalism and with such dedicated service in the way that they have done.

ANDREW MARR: The timings of the attacks presumably not a coincidence, just a couple of days after you'd taken over here at number ten?

GORDON BROWN: Our security warning has been severe. In other words it has been expected that there would be potential attacks over many, many months. We've never let the security warning drift downwards. It's obvious that we have a group of people not just in this country but around the world who are prepared at any time to inflict what they want to be maximum damage on civilians irrespective of who the religion of these people who are killed or maimed are to be.

And so we will have to be constantly vigilant. We will have to be alert at all times. And I think the message that's got to come out from Britain and from the British people is that as one we will not yield, we will not be intimidated. And we will not allow anyone to undermine our British way of life.

ANDREW MARR: The threat level has been raised to critical. Can you explain to people what that actually means. Your new security advisor Lord Stevens has said there's bound to be more attacks like these coming soon.

GORDON BROWN: Well it's obvious, I mean it's obviously when you have three incidents, two of them attempted car bombs in London that could have inflicted very big damage near very crowded places and then you have an incident at Glasgow where you have an attempt using a car to, to effectively cause maximum damage at an airport that it's right to raise the security level.

But of course the security level has been at a very high level. It's been at the number two level for some time. And the reason is that we are aware and have been aware for some time that we're dealing with a long term threat. It's not going to go away in the next few weeks or months. We have to fight it in a number of different ways. Militarily, by security, by police, by intelligence.

And I think it's important to say also on a day like this we have got to also fight it as a battle of hearts and minds. We've got to separate if you like those great moderate members of our community from a few extremists who wish to practice both violence and inflict maximum loss of life in the interest of the perversion of, of their religion.

ANDREW MARR: But does raising the level to critical and the things that Lord Stevens has said, does that mean that we must expect more attacks?

GORDON BROWN: I think we've got to be vigilant. And my message today is that we will be vigilant. And we have had to strengthen security in really three areas.

The first is at airports where it's important not just that the public are vigilant but that we do the checks that are necessary to ensure that passengers feel and are reassured that all measures are taken to ensure their safety in what is essentially one of the great crowded places, airports in our country.

ANDREW MARR: So it's going to take a bit longer to get onto your plane and so on for a while?

GORDON BROWN: I think I've got to appeal to members of the public to understand that at this point when we've had an attempted attack at an airport the security measures have to be increased.

And whether it's checks as people go into the airports or whether it's also of course more police patrols, or whether it may be some barriers that people have got to come through, these will be on the basis of an assessment made on the ground for particular airports what people must be expected to have. But of course I want the ordinary business of the country to continue.

ANDREW MARR: Just airports?

GORDON BROWN: I think the message is that, that terrorists will not disrupt the ordinary business of running our lives. Now the second area is of course crowded places.

And as we saw with the, the attempt at a bomb outside what would have been a crowded place in the middle of the night, we have got to take extra measures in crowded places and you will see a greater police presence and you will see in some cases further measures to enhance the security there.

I think the third area I should mention is, is cars. And of course these are car bombs that are being used, using a vehicle as in other parts of the world to inflict damage. And people may expect that there may be some checks of cars during the course of the next few days.

And I think they should be ready and hopefully cooperate with the police in what they are trying to do which is to prevent anybody carrying such a bomb going round the country.

ANDREW MARR: What's your message therefore to the people who would otherwise be thinking of going out to a night club this evening, going out to a crowded place? Should people carry on living their lives as normal?

GORDON BROWN: I think it's very important that people carry on living their lives as normal. I think it's very important that we the British people send a message to terrorists that they will not be allowed to undermine our British way of life.

But it's also important that the public are, are vigilant, that we take proper precautions, that we get the right balance between the reassurance that I can give that everything is being done in our power with heightened policing to protect people's lives. But also the need to be vigilant when it comes to going to crowded places and looking at what is actually happening there.

And I am sure that we will see, as we've seen from the counter terrorism hotline where the public are encouraged to, to tell us if there is anything that is untoward we have had massive public cooperation over these last few days and I think there is nothing but admiration for the way the general public has responded and will continue to respond because we are all in this together.

ANDREW MARR: You mentioned car bombs and cars particularly. Lord Stevens has said that this is the importing of techniques that have been used for a long time in Baghdad and indeed elsewhere like Bali.

GORDON BROWN: Well look we've had terrorist incidents in twenty five different countries round, round the world. We've had them in Asia, America, Europe, of course recently in, in Spain of course as well as in Britain. And you ..

ANDREW MARR: We haven't seen car bombs before.

GORDON BROWN: .. and you can, you can expect that a terrorist organisation will want to use methods such as using a car as a bomb effectively to cause maximum damage. And I think we've got to recognise what the nature of the threat that we're dealing with is.

Al Qaeda and people who are related to Al Qaeda and while I don't want to comment on the police investigation that is ongoing, it is clear that we are dealing in general terms with people who are associated with, with Al Qaeda in a number of incidents that have happened all across the world. It wants to make its point, its propaganda effort by inflicting the maximum damage irrespective of religion, on civilian life.

And I think that in any country - and we know that Al Qaeda are operating in more than sixty countries - you can expect that they will use different forms of, of missile or weapon or different forms of, of activity, whether it's planes or cars, to inflict that damage. And I think the point that I've got to make is terrorism can never be justified as an act of faith. It is an act of evil in all circumstances.

ANDREW MARR: Do we think that what happened in London and what happened in Glasgow Airport are connected, part of the same thing?

GORDON BROWN: I think you'll have found that the police have made it clear that they regard these as similar investigations and that there are features in what has happened in both Glasgow and London that lead them to, to mounting one set of investigations into, into this incident. But it's for the police obviously to comment on their investigation.

What I do know however is that they have made rapid progress. Over night there have not only been arrests but they have obviously been very active in different areas of the country. And I believe that we are showing not only that we are taking action to prevent future incidents but, but also at the same time the police are making progress in arresting people who may or may not be responsible.

ANDREW MARR: Can I turn to why this is happening. To what extent is it because of events in the Middle East? Can you look at people and say honestly that this country is safer as a result of what happened in Iraq?

GORDON BROWN: I think we've got to accept that Al Qaeda is operating and terrorist groups are operating in, in many countries, that not just Britain or parts of Europe or America are feeling the, the brunt of an attempt at terrorist attacks, but this is happening in many, many countries round the world. Look the first incident that was if you like the modern terrorist activity where non-state actors try to inflict the maximum damage on a state was nineteen ninety three in New York.

We then seen incidents in Bali, Madrid. We've seen them all around the world. And I think that the most important thing that should not be forgotten is that irrespective Iraq, irrespective of Afghanistan, irrespective of what is happening in different parts of the world we have an international organisation that is trying to inflict the maximum damage on civilian life in pursuit of a terrorist cause that is totally unacceptable to mainstream people in every faith in every part of the world.

ANDREW MARR: So you say irrespective of. Does that mean if we see most of the British troops coming out say in the course of next year from Iraq that won't make any difference to the, the threat levels or the threat that people face here?

GORDON BROWN: In my view the terrorist threat is long term and it's sustained. It is about those people who are essentially violent extremists who have a grievance against society, particularly against the values that we represent and the values that decent people in all religions represent. And it is their intention to inflict the maximum of damage in any part of the world to make their propaganda point. And therefore of course we want to see greater peace and security in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And of course making progress in the Middle East with Palestine and Israel will make a difference. But I think anybody I talk to, a leader in any part of the world, knows that we're in the business of dealing with a long term threat, a sustained threat, one that is unrelated in detail to one specific point of conflict in the world, but is a general view that is held by a group of terrorist extremists about the shape of the world they want to create, quite different from the values of liberty, the dignity we attach to the individual that is represented by our country and other countries in, in different parts of the world.

ANDREW MARR: So when somebody like General Dannatt talks about the two things being inextricably linked you don't agree with that, Iraq and London.

GORDON BROWN: What I believe, what I believe is that the terrorist threat we're dealing with - and that's why the measures that I have been looking at and talking about are long term and sustained. The terrorist threat we're dealing with is about a long term and sustained attack on the values that we represent.

And I believe we've got to win it in different ways. And that's why I've always talked about not just the military and the security and the police and intelligence effort that is brilliantly mounted. I've got nothing but praise for both our armed forces and our security services who are doing a magnificent job and at the same time risking their lives in so many theatres of the world. But it's also about hearts and minds.

If in the long term we cannot separate the moderates from the extremists and the extremists prey on young lives both in this country and in other parts of the world, then we will see culturally a distancing of people with extreme views from the rest of the community. And that's why the cultural effort, almost similar to what happened during the Cold War in the nineteen forties, fifties and sixties when we had to mount a propaganda effort, if you like, to explain to people that our values represented the best of commitments to individual dignity, to, to liberty and to, to human life being taken seriously. And I think that's what we are going to have to talk about in the next few years.

ANDREW MARR: Just on the values point, when people look at web sites and see the kind of thing being said about young women going to night clubs that they are slags who deserve what they're going to get, in other words to be killed, there can be no compromise presumably with that kind of view? It is a culture war?

GORDON BROWN: Because we wish to defend the freedom of the individual, the liberty of the individual citizen to, to do as they make their choices to do, within the rule of law. That is quite different from the views that are being perpetrated on what I regard as thousands of web sites around the world, Al Qaeda related operations in more than sixty countries of the world, propaganda being pumped out with a whole range of things including mock and real executions on web sites round the world.

Now these, this is what we're up against which shows me why what we've got to do is of a long term and sustained nature. You know that's why I've brought in Admiral West to be our Minister for, for Terrorism. He used to be head of defence intelligence. And he was head of the Royal Navy. I want him to be a minister with Tony McNulty dealing with terrorism directly. That's why I've brought in John Stevens as an international security advisor. That's why I've proposed a single security budget and a national ..

ANDREW MARR: So ..

GORDON BROWN: .. security strategy. Because we have got to deal with a problem that is not just a problem of today, painful as the events of the last few, few days have been, it's a problem that is long term and sustained and has got to be dealt with by the measures that I'm talking about which will require some of the changes that I've been commenting on even, even this morning.

ANDREW MARR: What about things like extending detention to if not ninety days at least nearer to ninety days? Are you going to press ahead with that?

GORDON BROWN: This is an issue because you'll find in a number of different cases that have already been heard in the courts, we're dealing with people with multiple identities, multiple addresses and multiple points of contacts with international organisations.

And therefore an investigation is bound to take longer. Because A, you've got to act early to avoid incidents so you, you can't catch people red handed. You've got to catch people before they've undertaken their terrorist act. And B, because the, the scale of the investigation is international, it's on computers and emails and everything else and very sophisticated. But that is not an issue for today. The, the issue for today is about how we can coordinate our security effort for the long term and of course we will seek consensus on the thirty days issue. But that is not an issue for today. The issue for today ..

ANDREW MARR: So thirty days, not ninety?

GORDON BROWN: Yeah. Yeah. On, and going beyond thirty days.

ANDREW MARR: Going beyond thirty days.

GORDON BROWN: Yeah of course we'll seek consensus. But that is not the central issue. The central issue is what we can do to prevent the security, to prevent the terrorist threat now. And what we can do to, in recognising that we're dealing with a long term security threat, how we can step up the coordination of our efforts. You know I've doubled the security budget over the last few years. It is now more than two billons a year where it was one billion before September the eleventh.

And the measures that I've been talking about over these last few months, in anticipation of things that need to be done in the future include a single security budget so that people can see that we're devoting the effort and the energies and also the publication as happens in some other countries of a national security strategy so that public can be far more aware both, both of ..

ANDREW MARR: Of what? What's going on?

GORDON BROWN: Both of what we are having to do and of the steps that we will have to take in the future to deal not just at the level of military and security and policing but hearts and minds as well.

ANDREW MARR: And that's more important in your view than things like changing the law on telephone tapping in courts and so on?

GORDON BROWN: But we will deal with these issues as well. ...

ANDREW MARR: Those will come up will they?

GORDON BROWN: The issue of intercept where we will conduct a review. There's the issue of going beyond thirty days. There's the issue of interrogation if you like, once people have been arrested. These are all issues under consideration. But if I'm frank this weekend this issue is about how we can make sure that people are more secure and more safe. The first duty of a government and the first responsibility of a prime minister ..

ANDREW MARR: Sure.

GORDON BROWN: .. is to ensure the safety and the security of the British people. And that is what I'm entirely focused on this weekend.

ANDREW MARR: Tony Blair's been through this before. Have you spoken to him at all about this? Has it been useful?

GORDON BROWN: Well Tony Blair and I have talked many times about what is a long term and lasting threat that is caused by terrorism.

ANDREW MARR: But not since you, you came in, talked about this?

GORDON BROWN: We keep in contact.

ANDREW MARR: All right. Can I turn to something which is I suppose, comes out of this but is also part of the broader constitutional picture which is the proposed Bill of Rights. Because in terms of a lot of the things that you may want to do they've bumped up against the, the imported European rights legislation. Do you think we will see a British Bill of Rights that changes the balance slightly, makes it easier to cope with the terrorist threat?

GORDON BROWN: Look what's unique in my view and what is you know uniquely British is how even when we have to take measures to increase the security of our nation, and even when we have to take measures that look tough in relation to security and are indeed tough, the uniqueness of Britain is that we will always be vigilant about protecting the civil liberties of the individual, avoiding what would be called arbitrariness.

So if you've got to move towards tougher security measures you must have proper judicial oversight, you must have proper parliamentary accountability. So the British way of doing things is not to deny that you need changes to increase security but the British way is to say if you've got to make these changes - and we have - and we're asking people to do difficult things over the next few days alone, then at the same time you've got to have proper judicial oversight of the authorities and you've got to have proper accountability to the people through parliament.

So if we have to do difficult things parliament must not only be informed but involved in discussing what happens and any national security strategy in my view should be subject to the widest possible debate, not just in parliament but in the country. That's how we protect against what people may claim to be - and wrongly so in my view - but claim to be an arbitrariness in the way that we treat individual people.

ANDREW MARR: You want to restore the powers of parliament and there's been a lot of discussion about how that might be done in terms of voting on peace and war and so on. I don't know if you're, you're going to go ahead with a statement on this tomorrow to the House of Commons.

Can I ask about one thing that's been much discussed which is whether you are at all persuaded that we need a change in our voting system, keeping constituencies but nonetheless having a more proportional voting system for the House of Commons?

GORDON BROWN: Let me say first of all that the priority tomorrow for, for parliament will be a statement on security. And it may be that we will have to move the statement on the constitution to later, later in the week.

As far as the statement on the constitution is concerned I'm not going to pre-announce what we're going to say to the House of Commons. I think it's an important part of our democracy that parliament will be told about the proposals I have for the constitution in parliament itself.

ANDREW MARR: ...

GORDON BROWN: As far, as far as the, as far as the voting system is concerned answer you, answer, answer you directly on that ..

ANDREW MARR: Yeah.

GORDON BROWN: .. we are committed to publishing a paper on, on the electoral system for a discussion in the country at a later stage and that will be a paper that will come later.

ANDREW MARR: And what about some of the other big areas? There's been talk of making the, the National Health Service in some way managerially independent. Are you attracted by that?

GORDON BROWN: What, what I said only last, last, last Sunday is that the National Health Service is going to be sixty years old next year. It's been a remarkable British achievement. The only country to have consistently had healthcare free at the point of need, irrespective of people's ability to pay.

But the sixtieth anniversary of the Health Service is also a chance, over the next year as we move towards it, to look at the kind of health service involving the public, the patients themselves, as well as the staff whom, whose work I value. And I think it's right to look at what are the decisions that government, because government is raising money from the people to pay for the Health Service, have got to take, but what are the decisions that can be less, left to other people and particularly to patients and to local people to make decisions about ..

ANDREW MARR: So you want to push, push power a bit down ..

GORDON BROWN: I not only want to push power downwards so that the local hospital and the local Trust have the power to make their own decisions but I want patients and I mean the general public to see themselves as more involved in the decisions that are made locally about how the Health Service can, can move forward. And I think it's often said that, that the Health Service can actually devolve more power.

And whether it's the expert patient programme where patients themselves take more sort of interest in the treatment that they are having themselves or whether it's public health where MRSA and everything else, we've got to persuade people to take public health more seriously, or whether it's simply involving themselves in the decisions about maternity and other service of local hospital. That is, that is the way that we've got to move in the future.

ANDREW MARR: Cleaner hospitals, more city academies, pushing power down. These are all Conservative Party policies.

GORDON BROWN: They're Labour Party policies. And these are the policies that I've been working on for some time. If you, if you take the National Health Service, I'm afraid to say that our opponents have voted against the additional resources that are absolutely essential for a modern health service. If you take city academies it's, it's the Labour government that has introduced city academies. And I've proposed how we can move that policy forward and allow universities and colleges which I think would be one big advance for academies to be able to form academies without having to pay, pay the fee. And if you take law and order and antisocial behaviour I'm afraid the Conservative Party, and it's to my regret actually and I think it should be to their shame, have voted against large numbers of the antisocial behaviour measures that are necessary for elderly people particularly to feel safe as they walk the streets even during the day.

ANDREW MARR: Well you've got some Conservatives obviously inside your tent already. Are you going to go for a snap election?

GORDON BROWN: That's not in my mind at all.

ANDREW MARR: So no election this year or next?

GORDON BROWN: No, it's the last thing in my mind this weekend if I may say so. The most important thing is the security and safety of the British people. And that is paramount in everything that I do, looking at, with the Home Security Jacqui Smith at the measures that we need to take to ensure that the public are safe. But what I will do is broaden the base of policies in this country.

I want an inclusive government. I've already brought in from the outside people not traditionally associated with the, the Labour, the Labour Party. I've brought Digby Jones in as Minister for Trade Promotion. I've brought in Ara Darzi one of the country's leading cancer specialists.

ANDREW MARR: Shirley Williams thinking about it I think ?

GORDON BROWN: I believe that there are other people who will want to work with us, in the national interest. Because in my view what matters is not some partisan advantage or some party gain over other parties.

What matters is, is rightly that the people of this country feel that a prime minister and a government are doing everything in their power, not just to be inclusive, but to ensure by being inclusive that you have the best people, all the talents, making the right decisions. And in security I think we will be well served by both Admiral West coming in ..

ANDREW MARR: Sure.

GORDON BROWN: .. and by Sir John Stevens.

ANDREW MARR: You've talked a lot about change. Are we going to see some other signs of change? Your elected deputy Harriet Harman made it clear that she was hostile to Guantanamo Bay, thought it should be closed. Is that the kind of thing you can associate yourself with now?

GORDON BROWN: Well I think Harriet Harman and everybody who has joined the cabinet accepts that they will speak to the policy of the government. And this will be a disciplined government where the policy of the government is the one that the ministers will speak to. And I'm not going to comment on individual issues of policy that have been raised by people during a deputy leadership campaign.

ANDREW MARR: Okay.

GORDON BROWN: The important thing however is that the collective responsibility of the government ..

ANDREW MARR: Remains.

GORDON BROWN: .. is accepted by ..

ANDREW MARR: I see.

GORDON BROWN: .. even those people who have joined from the outside and accepting that the Labour Whip in the House of Lords, all the different ministers ..

ANDREW MARR: They all have to, do they?

GORDON BROWN: They're accepting the, the ..

ANDREW MARR: Okay.

GORDON BROWN: .. the responsibility which, which is the collective responsibility of being part of a government. And I'm pleased that people from the outside who've never been traditionally associated with, with, with party politics are coming in because they believe like me it's the national interest, the public interest ..

ANDREW MARR: Okay.

GORDON BROWN: .. that matters more than anything else.

ANDREW MARR: Just as, just as we finish something about yourself. It must have been an extraordinary four days or so. You come in, you presumably get the Trident keys and, and all of that. Are we going to see a different style of prime ministership? Are you going to use Chequers less? Are you going to be a little more traditional?

GORDON BROWN: I think people want to know how you're going to approach the making of decisions. And I think people know now that we had a very long discussion at our first cabinet, full cabinet meeting about the constitution that involved every single member of the, the cabinet. So this is not what some people call sofa government. It is cabinet government. And the cabinet and ministers have got to be directly involved in the decisions.

But I think the second thing people will, will see - and I just emphasise this - where there is a problem to be solved or a challenge to be met, whether it's terrorism or security or an economic issue or the Health Service, we will try to recruit the best people irrespective of party label, irrespective of previous political persuasions, irrespective of what they've said before about this or that, because I want the best people. Cos you know, what I understand about Britain, and it's clearer even after this weekend with all the difficulties we face is that there is a yearning for stronger communities in this country. People know that the best way that Britain can move forward to meet all the challenges of the time is by finding in ourself a stronger sense of national purpose, a stronger sense of what holds us together and we could meet all the challenges better and we will meet them better by finding that national unity around common purpose.

ANDREW MARR: Prime minister, thank you very much indeed.

INTERVIEW ENDS


NB: this transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy

    Terror alert, BBC News, BBC Sunday AM, Last Updated: Sunday, 1 July 2007, 09:51 GMT 10:51 UK,  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/sunday_am/6258416.stm

Leading article:

Blair's incendiary legacy passes to Brown

British jihadism may be associated
with an extreme form of a psycho-social crisis of identity
among second-generation Muslim immigrants
which makes it peculiarly resistant to quick fixes

Published: 01 July 2007
The Independent on Sunday

What more vivid illustration could there be of the nature of the incendiary baton that Tony Blair has handed to his successor than the events of Gordon Brown's first 72 hours as Prime Minister? In the early hours of Thursday morning, three British soldiers were killed in Iraq. On Friday, two car bombs were found in central London. Then yesterday, a car in flames was driven into the main terminal building at Glasgow airport.

The most challenging early tasks that face Mr Brown are rebalancing our armed forces' engagements abroad, and meeting the threat of terrorism at home. As they came to define the kind of leader that Mr Blair was, so they will define Mr Brown's character as a leader.

There are three phases to this. First, the immediate response to the terrorist threat. There is not much politicians can do except satisfy themselves that the police and the security services are working effectively to find the suspects, identify the threat and learn the lessons. When they have done that, they have to reassure the public. Mr Brown and Jacqui Smith, the new Home Secretary, managed that well enough. Now they have to ensure resources continue to be deployed efficiently in response to the evolving threat. In this, Mr Brown has made an astute appointment of Admiral Sir Alan West as minister responsible for domestic security. It says something for the national security credibility of this Labour Government that a former head of the Royal Navy should be prepared to take the post.

Second, Mr Brown must decide what to do about British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. As Raymond Whitaker, our foreign editor, writes on pages 18-19, the military rationale for our forces' presence in Basra has all but expired. From the original intention that the troops would run an interim administration of much of southern Iraq before handing over to locals, our soldiers are now staying out of harm's way as much as possible in a fortified complex at the airport. We owe an obligation to the Iraqi people, but have reached the point where Mr Brown needs to persuade the Iraqi government that this obligation is now best met without our military presence.

In Afghanistan, the problems are the inverse of those in Iraq. The mission of our troops can be achieved, where in Iraq it cannot. But we need more troops in Afghanistan not fewer. We report today further evidence of the overstretch of military resources caused by engagement in two combat theatres at the same time: the priority is to concentrate resources on the fight that is winnable.

Third, the new Prime Minister has to attend to the underlying causes of jihadist terrorism. Of course, there is a link with foreign policy, in that British engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan is used as a grievance by the ideologues of al-Qa'ida to rouse anti-Western sentiment. That sense of grievance is monstrously misplaced because it asserts that the purpose of Western intervention in those countries is to oppress Muslims. However mistaken the Iraq invasion was, that was not its purpose; the removal of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was explicitly authorised by the United Nations and supported by nearly every Muslim country in the world. Yet the belief that the British state is complicit in American evil is powerful enough to help motivate young men brought up in this country to kill their fellow citizens by suicide bombing.

But foreign policy is only one factor: the alleged immorality of Western lifestyles is another recurrent theme. That the London car bomb outside a nightclub was the work of jihadist terrorists is suggested by the chilling words of one of the plotters recently jailed for planning to bomb the Ministry of Sound: "The biggest nightclub in central London: no one can put their hands up and say they are innocent ... those slags dancing around."

British jihadism may be associated with an extreme form of a psycho-social crisis of identity among second-generation Muslim immigrants, which makes it peculiarly resistant to quick fixes. Impressively, Mr Brown was already doing many of the right things before news of the planned explosions broke. He had appointed Shahid Malik as an international development minister, and Sadiq Khan to the Whips' Office, the first Muslim members of a British Government. They will, we hope, strengthen the voice of the vast majority of Muslims who are dedicated to this country. He had appointed Adam Ingram to review our military response to terrorism around the world. And David Miliband and his team can make a fresh start in seeking to explain the motives of British foreign policy.

Now, though, in the first three days of his premiership, the urgency of Mr Brown's challenge has been brought home. Our new Prime Minister's qualities as a statesman are being tested already.

    Leading article: Blair's incendiary legacy passes to Brown, IoS, 1.7.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2725648.ece

10.15am

Brown to complete reshuffle

as cabinet tackles constitution

Friday June 29, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Hélène Mulholland and agencies

Gordon Brown will set out his plans to restore trust in politics and make the government more accountable to parliament today as he unveils the rest of his ministerial team.

Jim Murphy was last night named as the new Europe minister, a post previously filled by Geoff Hoon until his promotion to chief whip yesterday.

The decision to include the ultra-Blairite MP for East Renfrewshire was seen by some a test of Mr Brown's promise to lead a government of "all the talents".

At his second meeting of the cabinet in less than two days as prime minister, Mr Brown is due to hold a "lengthy discussion" on his plans for constitutional reform.

Jack Straw, the new justice secretary, indicated today that the moves would involve redressing the balance of power between the government and MPs.

Mr Brown plans to make good on his commitment to give parliament a say in declarations of war and to take intelligence assessments out of the hands of press officers.

The plans, trailed before Mr Brown became prime minister, will be seen as a symbolic break with the Tony Blair era dominated by the controversy over Iraq.

Mr Straw said today: "There isn't any doubt that one of the reasons why trust in politicians and the government has been reduced is because of what happened over Iraq."

It was a matter of "profound regret" that intelligence about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction turned out to be inaccurate, he said.

The need for reform and to re-engage a public disillusioned with the political process was one of the key themes of Mr Brown's campaign for the Labour leadership.

As Mr Brown prepares to meet with his top team, the roll call of new junior ministers will be released over the course of the day and is expected to stretch beyond the normal political arena, with Sir Digby Jones, the former head of the Confederation of British Industry, tipped to join government ranks.

Sir Digby, who declared when appointed government skills envoy last December that he was committed to remaining independent of government, could find the concept of collective responsibility under a Labour government a challenge.

Mr Brown's big-tent approach has already raised eyebrows, with the choice of Sir Mark Malloch Brown, the former deputy secretary general of the United Nations and an outspoken critic of American foreign policy, as Foreign Office minister covering Africa, Asia and the UN.

Mr Brown's spokesman was forced to stress his commitment to strong relations with the United States and the White House, pointing to Sir Mark's commitment to reconstruction in Iraq.

An offer to bring some Liberal Democrats into the government was rejected last week by party leader Sir Menzies Campbell, although the party's Lady Williams is still considering whether to take a post as an adviser.

    Brown to complete reshuffle as cabinet tackles constitution, NYT, 29.6.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/gordonbrown/story/0,,2114837,00.html

Sketch

Titanic tedium:

the bores are back in town

Friday June 29, 2007
Guardian
Simon Hoggart

Gordon Brown yesterday announced his government of all the bores. Having failed to sign Paddy Ashdown, a man who can at least strangle his enemies with piano wire, he has gone for the snoozers, the crashers, the narcolepts and the headbangers, now working alongside their spiritual leader, the new chancellor of the exchequer. Alistair Darling's lightest - no, he doesn't do light, his most leaden - word can stop a raging grizzly bear in its tracks.

But yesterday a small surprise. The Speaker began the session by announcing that he was issuing a warrant for the election of a member for Sedgefield "in the room [sic] of the Rt Hon Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, who since his election hath accepted the office of steward or bailiff of Her Majesty's three Chiltern hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham in the county of Buckingham".

And we all thought he was going to Jerusalem to sort out the most desperately violent people on the planet! A colleague reminds me that this stuff about the Chilterns is the ancient formula for anyone leaving the Commons, since it is technically "an office of profit under the crown" for which MPs are ineligible. So he is leaving the house. How will we tell?

Jack Straw, the leader of the house, appeared to tell us what was on the agenda for next week. We all knew that he was about to become minister of justice, but he affected to be unaware. "I really enjoy this job, and I am ready to go on and on and on," he said - meaning, as it happened, on and on and on until lunchtime. Theresa May complained that she had heard on the TV news that Harriet Harman was about to replace him. She would then be deputy leader of the Labour party, chair of the Labour party, and leader of the house. Wasn't "three hats Harman" going too far? She is also to be minister for women, a fourth hat!

Then we raced back to catch the latest cabinet postings. The bores were back in town. Ms Harman, of course. Des Browne - astoundingly the only person in an unchanged job, defence secretary.

John Hutton, a bore's bore, a true titan of tedium, is now the industry secretary, replacing Mr Darling, which, for one of the greatest snore-makers, is like a parish priest getting the new Pope's last job.

Jacqui Smith - who? She used to be chief whip. Now she is home secretary, and has to make sure that we and all our loved ones can sleep easy despite the threat of suicide bombers. As one expert said: "For anyone who has been Labour party chief whip, al-Qaida will hold no terrors. I'd face Bin Laden before Bob Marshall-Andrews any day."

    Titanic tedium: the bores are back in town, NYT, 29.6.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,,2114616,00.html

I rejoiced

- and then Brown began to speak

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 28/06/2007
The Daily Telegraph
By Boris Johnson

You know what, I decided about lunchtime yesterday that I couldn't take any more. The whole thing was turning into a blubfest of nauseating proportions. First we had the Pyongyang-style standing ovation, in which hundreds of hypocritical parliamentarians clapped their hands sore in celebration of Tony Blair - when a great many of them have spent the past 10 years actively trying to winkle him out of Downing Street, a group that includes many on his own side, and above all his successor.

Then poor Margaret Beckett was so overwhelmed that she started to weep, and had to be "comforted" by John Reid, a procedure that is surely enough to make anyone snap out of it. And then we had the cavalcade moving off to the Palace, and what with the hushed tones of the newscasters and the thudding of the television helicopters overhead, the whole thing started to remind me of Diana's funeral.

"It has been a very emotional day," said Sky News's Adam Boulton. "I have seen some incredible things today, things I never thought I would see." What were these incredible things? "I have seen the Blairs' exercise bicycle removed from Number 10," groaned the honest fellow; and across Britain one imagined the Sky audience returning their sodden handkerchiefs to their eyes as they were racked with fresh bouts of sobbing. The exercise bicycle! The Prime Ministerial exercise bicycle! Never more to be used in Downing Street again! Woe, woe and thrice woe!

advertisementEven among the cynical brainboxes who sit here in the shadow ministry for higher education, I noticed a certain oohing and aahing, and so you will understand that I was seized with a desire to puncture the mood. Enough, I thought, of this glutinous sentimentality, and prepared to denounce the entire proceedings as a fraud.

Look here, I felt like saying, everyone is carrying on as though Blair's departure is the finest and noblest act of self-sacrifice since Captain Oates walked out into the blizzard. But he was pushed, for heavens' sake. He was forcibly ejected through the parliamentary tent-flaps by a Labour Party that was unable to forgive him for the war in Iraq.

This carefully choreographed handover is just the culmination of the putsch that was launched last autumn by some of his trustiest admirers, such as Siôn Simon MP; and quite frankly, I was going to add, I am myself not completely devastated that he is going.

Sky News may be treating it like the funeral of Queen Victoria, but I am really feeling quite chipper about the political extinction of Tony Blair. Yes, I was going to say, there are some of us who are bearing up pretty well, on the whole, and there are some of us who can't think of a better fate for Tony than to be carted off to the Middle East. I was just about to launch into a polemic on these lines, when something happened on the television that caused the words to die on my lips.

Suddenly my mood changed; suddenly I felt a sense of desolation and morosity that we had lost Tony Blair, and I can tell you the exact moment when I caught the bug and joined the national mourning. It was the moment Gordon Brown opened his mouth, and, with every word he uttered, the mercury of my mood started to sink and the clouds rolled in.

Of course, it was partly a question of style. It was after only a few seconds of Gordonian gurning and grunting that I felt almost suffocated by the earnestness of his utterance. There was such a grimness, such a solemnity, that I instantly missed Tony's gift for catching the taste of the moment, for the joky self-deprecation, for the combination of passion with a sense of optimism and uplift.

Gordon was all about work: working steadfastly, working purposefully, working resolutely, and he went on so long that I remembered that the poor Queen had been closeted with him for fully 50 minutes while he banged on about how hard he was going to work; and it is in this emphasis - on his personal devotion to government activism, as a cure for the ills of society - that one can see the outlines of his strategy against the Tories.

It is going to be Roundheads versus Cavaliers, Puritans versus freebooters, work against play. It is going to be dour, hard-working, nail-biting Gordon against those he will seek to portray as the merrymaking amateurs. And of course there will be many who will fall for this line, alas.

What they forget, of course, is that Gordon's idea of work is really government regulation and legislation and intrusion and interference, with all its fiscal consequences. We all believe in welfare, and in the duty of society to the needy; but it really seems never to occur to Gordon that sometimes people can be genuinely better off - especially people running public services - if we give them back power, rather than endlessly depriving them of their own right of initiative.

Sometimes parents and patients will be happier if we give them the hope and the chance of deciding, accomplishing - even buying - something themselves, rather than making them the victims of depression and disappointment when they are let down, by public services, in circumstances beyond their control.

Gordon croaks, "Let the work of change begin", like some mad professor hunched over a necromantic experiment. What he means is "let the blizzard of legislation continue", with all the dire consequences that implies for the size of the state and the burden of tax. There will be no change: only an intensification of the rhythm that has criminalised 3,000 courses of human conduct over the past 10 years, a process in which Gordon Brown has been the principal player.

Quite what Quentin Davies is doing with this lot I have no idea, though for the avoidance of doubt he should now do two things. He should dispel any possible suggestion of corruption by announcing that he will in no circumstances accept a peerage, and he should offer to be the Labour candidate for Sedgefield, so the people of Grantham can have a proper Tory. That might cheer me up, though as I write these words the rain is drifting past my window in sheets. Yes, a gloomy Scotch mist has descended on Westminster, and who knows when it will lift.

Boris Johnson is MP for Henley

    I rejoiced - and then Brown began to speak, DTel, 28.6.2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/06/28/do2801.xml

Most of all,

we need a down-to-earth leader

Ordinary people care about education, not reshuffles

June 28, 2007
From The Times
Anatole Kaletsky

With the Blair-Brown transition finally accomplished – and in exactly the smooth and orderly manner of which Gordon Brown always dreamt – the new Prime Minister must quickly achieve three political objectives if he wants to maximise his chances of securing a personal political mandate and to minimise the risk of his dream turning into the nightmare of general election defeat.

Mr Brown, in his brief statement yesterday from the steps of Downing Street, showed a perfect understanding of what these objectives are. First and foremost, he must prove that the Blair-Brown transition represents a genuine change of government. In his three-minute speech, the word “change” was repeated eight times. Secondly, he must restore some trust in government after Tony Blair’s decade of spin and prevarication. Thirdly, he must prove to voters, and especially to traditional Labour voters, that he lives in the real world of ordinary people, rather than floating ethereally, like Tony Blair, in a parallel universe of foreign presidents, global celebrities and business tycoons. Significantly, the only important polling question in which Mr Brown consistently lags behind David Cameron is the one about “understanding the concerns of ordinary people”.

Mr Brown understands these challenges, but to judge by the snippets emerging about his intentions in government, he has no idea how to meet them. If the new Government’s first few weeks are dominated by announcements of constitutional reforms, ministerial reshuffles and restructurings in the Civil Service or the NHS, Mr Brown will not just be failing to send a message of change. He will be signalling that, just like his predecessor, he lives in a self-deluding mental world of semantic abstractions, far removed from the realities of everyday life.

What, then, could Mr Brown do to convince the country that it now has a down-to-earth government of honesty and change? The answer is “plenty”.

The most obvious opportunities are in foreign policy. Iraq was not just Mr Blair’s most unpopular policy, but also the symbol of his dishonesty. Unless Mr Brown distances himself from the Blair-Bush policy on Iraq, his generalised promises of change will not just be futile but worse than that: they will reinforce his own reputation for dishonesty.

Luckily for Mr Brown, a decisive policy shift on Iraq would now be quite easy to accomplish. Since Britain’s troop numbers have already been reduced to just 5,500, the new Prime Minister has merely to promise to continue and complete the withdrawal within a timetable agreed with the Iraqis, removing Mr Blair’s transparently dishonest proviso that British troops will only be withdrawn once “security conditions allow”. Everyone knows that the real determinant of British troop numbers is not the security situation in Basra, but the political situation in Washington, where President Bush desperately needs to show that his bungling in Iraq still has the support of one remaining international ally. This is exactly the impression Mr Brown must now reverse. Until he does so, everything else he tries to do in foreign policy will turn to dust.

But while foreign policy shifts could go a long way to confirm Mr Brown’s commitments to honesty and change, they would do nothing to advance his third objective. Far from showing that he is in touch with ordinary voters’ concerns, preoccupation with foreign policy would send the opposite message, as it did in Mr Blair’s final years.

Clearly Mr Brown must refocus his Government on domestic issues, especially health, education, crime and taxes; but in the priorities he sets among these policies he seems to be on the brink of making some serious misjudgments. The subject on which Mr Brown feels personally most passionate is education, as he made clear again yesterday in the most heartfelt passage of his Downing Street statement: “I grew up in the town that I now represent in Parliament. I went to the local school. I wouldn’t be standing here without the opportunities that I received there.”

Yet politically he seems to believe that his top priority, both for new legislation and for government spending, must be further reform of the NHS. This seems to me a big mistake: education and crime are now much bigger problems than health for the British public. They are also much more fundamental to the real responsibilities of an effective government.

Law and order and decent universal education are genuine public goods, which can only be guaranteed by governments. This is not true of health, which can be and is provided by a wide variety of private and public arrangements around the world. Moreover, the NHS has already absorbed enough public money and suffered enough administrative upheavals. It now needs a long period of stability to establish whether it can provide reasonable value for its new enhanced budgets, or whether it will ultimately have to be replaced by partly privatised social insurance, along Scandinavian lines.

In education, by contrast, the need for change is more apparent than ever, especially at the secondary level – and at the bottom of the achievement spectrum, not the top.

If Mr Brown really wants to show that he can think afresh and that he is in touch with the concerns of ordinary voters he should recognise that the people of Britain are far more worried about the daily disappointments of their children’s education – not to mention the physical threats they face on the way to school, as they run the gauntlet of outlaw gangs increasingly addicted to violence – than they are about occasional inconveniences in their far less frequent contacts with hospitals and doctors. Britain’s public policy debate now desperately needs to be reorientated from elite issues, such as recruitment to universities and grammar schools, towards the real social challenge of the past two decades, which has been the emergence of a small but dangerously uneducated and increasingly alienated, violent underclass.

There are many other policy areas – for example, housing, nuclear power, prison reform, asylum and Europe – where Mr Brown could quickly take the initiative and show that he is more decisive, more honest and more in touch with Britain’s real problems than his predecessor. But it will be above all in dealing with the underclass that Mr Brown will have to show whether he can embrace new ideas and connect with the real concerns of the British public.

    Most of all, we need a down-to-earth leader, Ts, 28.6.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anatole_kaletsky/article1996536.ece

Johann Hari:

The truths that Brown must acknowledge

A divided left and a dodgy electoral system

have skewed Britain to the right - not the will of the people

Published: 28 June 2007
The Independent

The last days of Tony Blair - with a standing ovation, a tear, and the faint echo of "Things Can Only Get Better" in the distance - threw up a string of harbingers for Gordon Brown. In Blair's final gasps of power, you could begin to glimpse the shape of the woes and worries waiting in Brown's in-tray - and a few reasons to hope.

It is strangely apt that Gordon Brown should take over Britain as thousands of the country's houses lie under water, and the victims of a freak weather incident are buried. This week's storm-floods follow hard on the floods of 2000 and 2001, which the distinguished meteorologist Philip Eden says would have only naturally happened once every 750 years.

While it's hard to trace any one specific event to global warming, the evidence suggests these floods are part of a pattern of increasingly extreme weather events that have been predicted by virtually all the world's climatologists. This Weather of Mass Destruction, unleashed by us, is going to dominate both the geopolitics and domestic politics of the Brown years, as the planet's natural systems begin to unravel all around us. London and the South-east are extraordinarily vulnerable: when the London Assembly investigated our flood defences after the drowning of New Orleans, the findings were startling. Five per cent of East London's defences are in "poor or very poor" condition - about the same proportion as New Orleans' levees.

But has Brown caught up with this yet? On the contrary, he is actually encouraging the growth of Britain's fastest-swelling contribution to destabilising the climate: air travel. Flying currently accounts for 20 per cent of our impact on global warming, and it is growing at 7 per cent a year.

Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute has calculated that, on this trajectory, even if we stopped every other form of greenhouse gas emissions, air travel would make up 134 per cent of Britain's safe level of carbon emissions by 2050 - a guarantee of total failure.

Brown has always rejected the arguments for limiting air travel as "not politically possible": we all love cheap flights. But the floods are a reminder that political reality on global warming is going to be given a hard shove by physical reality, again and again.

Tony Blair's final comments on Iraq offer Brown another bleak harbinger. He insisted "the problem in Iraq is entirely" due to "two elements": "the Iranian government and al-Qa'ida". But this is delusional. General George Casey, former commander of the multinational force in Iraq, recently estimated there are 500 foreign fighters in Iraq.

Does Blair really believe this depraved handful are responsible for the 650,000 civilian deaths? Or that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - another repellent figure - is more responsible for the deaths than the non-military US mercenaries ravaging the country, say, or the disastrous IMF "structural adjustment" that has produced 60 per cent unemployment?

Brown needs to return to reality on Iraq - and that means acknowledging two truths. The country is in a hellish Sunni-Shia civil war, and 78 per cent of Iraqis in the latest poll believe the occupying forces are making the situation worse.

But as the clock finally ran out on the Blair years, there was also a hopeful sign for the future - even though it may not have seemed so at first. The right-wing press reacted to the election of Harriet Harman as deputy leader of the Labour Party with astonishing viciousness, laying into her hair, her accent, her fingernails. (Funny how male politicians don't get any of this, isn't it?) They then savaged her politics as "far left" and "an obvious electoral liability".

What this showed is, in fact, how out of touch the right-wing press is with public opinion - and how Brown can afford to defy them. Let's illustrate this by looking at a particularly sour piece by Quentin Letts, who calls her - in openly sexist terms - "a hectoring, bleating, finger-wagging nanny". He announced with great confidence that "Middle England thinks Miss Harman is about as appealing as a case of raging trench foot". But in reality, when opinion poll firms play film of Harman speaking to ordinary Middle England voters, they become 15 per cent more likely to vote Labour - and among female swing-voters, this rises to 22 per cent.

This is important for Brown to learn now: Britain is not a conservative country. In reality, Middle England supports almost all of the "far-left" policies Harman articulated in her campaign. Saying the war in Iraq was wrong? 76 per cent. Not renewing Trident? 54 per cent. Redistributing more money from rich to poor? 70 per cent. Giving parents the right to demand flexible working hours (which Letts calls "authoritarian")? 66 per cent.

It is not the centre-left that is grossly out of touch with ordinary British people. It is people like Quentin Letts. Yet throughout the past decade, Tony Blair mistook press opinion for public opinion. He bought into the Mail and the Sun's bogus claims to speak for ordinary people, and ended up with a miserly 35 per cent of the vote. Brown must not repeat this mistake.

For the past 40 years, at every single general election, parties committed to higher taxes and higher public spending have won a majority of the votes. It is a divided left and a dodgy electoral system that has skewed Britain to the right - not the will of her people.

Brown needs to start healing this division now, before these structural advantages may hand the country to David Cameron. Reaching out to Menzies Campbell, before electoral arithmetic could demand it in a hung parliament, was a smart move (and it was foolish of Campbell to decline it). Brown's unexpected openness to talking about electoral reform is also a sign that he is at least partly aware of this problem.

And this, perhaps, brings us to the most glistening moment of hope from Blair's curtain call. If you had said in 1997 that the final question Blair would take at his final Prime Minister's Questions would be from Ian Paisley pledging his commitment to power-sharing and pledging that "every man, woman and child in Ulster will have the same rights, opportunities and liberties", you would have been swiftly drug-tested.

But it happened. The world turned. Prime Minister Brown needs to know that "political reality" is not static; it is dynamic. Seemingly unshiftable rocks become eroded over time. Many things that seem impossible today - a turnaround on global warming, say, or a victory over the right-wing press - can be done with political will. Brown has the right values. He needs now to find courage because, yes, embedded in Blair's last moments were some terrible warnings - but each one is a shimmering opportunity for our new Prime Minister too.

    Johann Hari: The truths that Brown must acknowledge, I, 28.6.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/johann_hari/article2717249.ece

Leading article:

Things can only get better...

Published: 28 June 2007
The Independent

It was the catchiest and most optimistic of campaign themes, and in 1997 it caught the national mood. "Things can only get better" was the lyric that played in the landslide victory of Tony Blair. Thereafter he had to deliver.

Mr Blair is not the only one to blame for the disappointment that suffused his departure yesterday. The hopes that had swept him to office 10 years and seven weeks before were wildly inflated. But those hopes were ours, as well as New Labour's. After almost a generation of increasingly unpopular Conservative government, perhaps we allowed ourselves to become carried away.

Nor were we completely wrong to believe. Some things did get better. The country that Gordon Brown takes over is richer and more outward looking. Social attitudes are by and large more tolerant. We have the promised minimum wage, child poverty was addressed as a priority. Unemployment and overall crime are both down; NHS waiting times are shorter. There is peace in Northern Ireland; bold intervention rescued Sierra Leone and Kosovo. London even prevailed over Paris to stage the Olympic Games. It would be churlish to underestimate these achievements.

Yet in at least three significant respects things did not get better during the Blair years. They became distinctly worse. And our disappointment derives not just from the hopes Mr Blair made and left unfulfilled, but from the fact that two enormous parliamentary majorities had given him the political capital and the legislative means to do so much more.

At home, the gap between rich and poor is wider than for 50 years and social mobility has fallen. Much taxpayers' money has been spent ­ authorised, we note, by the then Chancellor ­ but to what effect? Abroad, a Prime Minister who came to office extolling the spread of peace has departed leaving more than 5,000 British troops fighting a war in Iraq that has ravaged that country and cost more than 150 British lives.

Lastly, trust between politicians and people is as low as it has ever been. And distrust breeds cynicism. What with the "spin" culture, Iraq's non-existent weapons, loans for peerages and the rest, a gulf of credibility progressively opened up between "them" and "us". We dimly recall something about "purer than pure".

Gordon Brown must begin by addressing this sense of disappointment and cynicism. The corrosion that set in during Mr Blair's later years in Downing Street has to be reversed if the change of Prime Minister is to mean anything at all.

The prelude has been promising. To judge by what he said at his new front door yesterday, and what he has said since he knew the job was his, Mr Brown seems to appreciate the particular areas where his predecessor went so wrong. The tone and the words have changed. Gravitas and application have replaced the confident optimism of 10 years ago. The new themes are service and duty, listening and effort. Success, it is implied, is for us, the people, to judge.

Even so, restoring trust in politicians, in government and in New Labour will not be easy. After the experience of the past 10 years, a Brown government will win back people's confidence only over time. From now on, words have to match reality; there can be no hyping or twisting the facts for effect ­ whether it is official statistics, intelligence or the prospects for military success.

Power must be broadened and devolved. Much has been said, most of it rightly negative, about Mr Blair's style of government and the secrecy, lack of consultation and concentration of power it entailed. Mr Brown has raised hopes of something different: a broader cabinet, more consultation, more decisions taken at a local level or by relevant professionals ­ and a shift back to parliamentary democracy from quasi-presidential government.

As intentions these are welcome. Changing the process, though, is only half the battle. The other half is to make voters feel that their voice is heard. Mr Brown is promising a new government with new priorities, and change in the many areas where he believes ­ correctly ­ that people are dissatisfied: from the health service through affordable housing to schools. His statement yesterday was businesslike and brisk. But the proof will be in how soon he can make a new approach felt ­ and simultaneously convince people that another change is not just the latest instalment of New Labour's perpetual revolution.

Abroad, Mr Brown has undertaken to honour existing international commitments in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Post-Blair relations with the United States have also to be addressed. But what, if anything, he decides to do about Iraq will for many of us be a crucial test of his credibility. The historic scale of the mistake is now all too apparent. It was Mr Blair's mistake, but Mr Brown sat at the table and went through the lobbies. His task must now be to extract Britain from the physical and diplomatic wreckage at the smallest possible cost to our forces and to the Iraqis.

In breaking with the Blair years, Mr Brown has certain advantages. His gruff public manner and personal asceticism suit today's more serious times. He has observed Mr Blair's successes and failures at first hand, and had abundant time to plan his strategy. Moreover the experience of the past 10 years has probably dampened voters' expectations about just how much any government can do.

So let's play Mr Brown into No 10 with a rousing rendering of that New Labour hymn. Altogether now, one more time: "Things can only get better" . Can't they?

    Leading article: Things can only get better..., I, 28.6.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2717253.ece

Gordon Brown

and the making of a Prime Minister

He has been in the public eye for well over a decade,
yet few of us feel that we know Gordon Brown.

In search of a solution to the enigma,
Paul Vallely retraces his long journey to power

Published: 28 June 2007
The Independent

A line of tankers waits offshore of the small Scottish town of Kirkcaldy near the mist-shrouded isle of Inchkeith in the Firth of Forth. They are bringing raw materials to the Exxon ethylene plant and taking away the refined chemical which is used to make plastic bags, washing-up liquid, paint, anti-freeze and car components.

The ships are far bigger than the ones which, 300 years ago, Kirkcaldy's most famous son, Adam Smith, would sit and watch as a boy. But they transmit the same message about the importance of trade and markets which led Smith to produce The Wealth of Nations, the book that made him the father of modern economics.

It is a message that has been learnt too by Gordon Brown, Kirkcaldy's second most famous son (unless you count the twice world darts champion Jocky Wilson who still lives there). And the rest of the town has slowly been learning it too.

For the past few weeks, I have been visiting the places that have shaped the political personality of the man who has become the first British prime minister appointed in the 21st century. I have spoken - on and off the record - to people who encountered him on his journey to No 10. Though he was a born in Glasgow, his parents were both from Fife, and Mr Brown lived there from the age of three. His formative years were spent in Kirkcaldy. It was the place to start.

The old industries on which the town once depended - coal mines and linoleum factories - were in decline when Gordon was a boy. They are long gone now, though a solitary Dutch-owned factory still produces an allergy-free luxury floor covering called Marmoleum. Today Kirkcaldy, which was a few years ago named as the third poorest town in Britain, has a shrinking chemical and engineering industry. The biggest employers are the local authority, the health service and the call centres for Sky TV and others on the John Smith Business Park (not perhaps what the man who was once Gordon Brown's mentor would have envisaged).

The most prominent new building in the town centre is a massive brutalist Tesco that sits like some huge Lego building a child has plonked down in the middle of his big brother's Hornby train set. It is a symbol of the new commercial reality that has imposed itself upon this otherwise well-proportioned little Scottish town.

But the social values engendered by the old days remain. "It is a friendly old-fashioned place," said Judy Hamilton, a councillor for the town's central district and a justice of the peace. She moved to Kirkcaldy nearly 20 years ago from Rochdale. "With a population of 70,000, it's a place where people still know each other. Here Gordon Brown is warm, accessible and not at all remote. During the last elections he campaigned with me and people came running out of their houses to have their photos taken with him."

Local opinion was summed up by a man whose career symbolised the transition from heavy industry to a modern service economy. An ex-miner turned renal dialysis nurse called Charlie told me: "I've never heard a single bad word about him in this town. You have this image down south that he's dour and mean and suspicious. But wait and see."

Raith Rovers Football Club is the embodiment of the strong sense of community solidarity and loyalty which were the first influence on Gordon Brown's political personality. This year, the team lost in the play-offs in the Scottish second division. But, despite that, the gates are good at Stark's Park, on the edge of the town centre where - as a boy - Gordon and his brothers sold programmes to gain free entry at half-time.

Rovers are the best-supported side in the second division despite their glory days being long gone. It is 12 years since they beat Celtic in the Scottish Cup Final and went into Europe where the high point of the club's 120-year history was a scoreboard which at one point - famous in local legend - read Bayern Munich 0 Raith Rovers 1.

Brown, who prides himself on an encyclopaedic knowledge of Scottish football statistics, is still a regular at the draughty little ground whose rickety stands conjure the atmosphere of football in the 1950s and afford little protection from the chill winds that blow off the North Sea.

"He came to nearly half the home games last season," said John Drysdale, the club's community and commercial manager. And when the club went into financial crisis 18 months ago Brown used his contacts to bring local investors into a community buy-out of the club. To the anxiety of his security men, Brown, as Chancellor, insisted on mixing with the supporters. They are more than constituents. They are the people he grew up with.

There are those who say that Fife has shaped him far more profoundly. The land between the Firths of Forth and Tay has been an independent kingdom since long before the murky medieval days when Macbeth murdered King Duncan and was avenged by the Thane of Fife, Macduff.

Its occupants pride themselves on being different from other Scots; one cherished characteristic is, in Scots, that of being "thrawn", which translates as stubborn, cross-grained and defiant. Fifers have long memories, and brag of making good friends but bad enemies. There are plenty in Westminster who will concur.

In Fife, they see no contradiction between friendliness and stubborn insularity, just as Brown sees none between the views of Adam Smith, that high priest of free enterprise, and his own insistence on the importance of social justice.

"If you're going to have social justice and fairness you need a successful economy," said Brown's constituency agent Alex Rowley, who was born and bred in Kirkcaldy. "In the Eighties, the Tories tried to turn Adam Smith into this totemic figure who was anti what the Labour movement stood for but here he's remembered as the man who wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments before he wrote The Wealth of Nations."

Though the latter came to be seen as the bible of laissez-faire economics at its most heartless, Smith seems clear from his first book, which he republished after the success of the second, that it rested on a strong sense of the need for social and civic responsibility.

"Gordon's agenda has always been that you can have both," said Alex Rowley. "Helping poor families is key to his vision - which is why he has enacted tax credits, support for pensioners, lifted children out of poverty." But he sees jobs, not benefits, as the key to that. Under Brown's chancellorship there are a record 29 million people in work - more than at any time in our history.

"But within the constituency, Gordon has always stressed it's not about taking from the rich to give to the poor. It's not the politics of envy. It's about empowering people to succeed. The biggest thing that shaped him - a far bigger influence than that of the community of Kirkcaldy was his upbringing in the manse."

There is a plaque on the altar table in the church in which Gordon Brown's father was once the minister. "John Ebenezer Brown MA BD 1954-1967", it says. It stands no longer in the centre of the church, however, but in a stairway. For there have been changes at St Bryce Kirk.

Seven years ago, the congregation decided to fix a false floor across the church, leaving the upper floor beneath the soaring nave for worship, and turning the new ground floor into a community centre. Today the pulpit from which the Rev John Brown once delivered sermons - with titles such as "Our Need of Vision", "Making The Best Use of Time" and "Today's Christian Duty" - has gone. The church is home to more secular activity.

Upstairs, they still get an average congregation of almost 300 with a good age range for the family service on a Sunday, but downstairs, seven days a week, the place is used by groups for toddlers, the elderly and cancer support groups, for tai chi classes, by Fife Opera and for exam overspills for the Adam Smith College over the road. Hilary Marshall, the church administrator, explained: "It's a deliberate strategy to get people in, make them comfortable with the church and represent how a Christian lives and make God relevant to them today." One side aisle has been converted into a cafeteria serving soup and sandwich lunches, with homemade quiches and cakes. "When homeless people come, we can give them food not money."

It is something of which, one suspects, the Rev John E Brown would have approved. The back door of the stark stone manse down the road where the new Prime Minister was brought up had frequent visitors from down-and-outs and hard-up families whose only income, as the pits and factories closed came from gathering sea-coal from the town's blackened beaches. These people knew that they wouldn't leave empty-handed.

Here, religion was not confined to the saying of prayers. It was enacted through social action in a world where, as Brown was later to put it, "as a minister's son you see every problem coming to your doorstep. You become aware of a whole range of distress and social problems. I suppose it's not a bad training for politics."

For all the grandeur of its name, the Princess Alexandra Eye Pavilion is one of the least prepossessing of Edinburgh's fine public buildings. It is a square block of glass and badly-weathered concrete but it was a state-of-the- art building when Gordon Brown was admitted there back in 1967. Upstairs in its library I met Dr Hector Chawla, who in 2001, retired as director of the Pavilion and of the Scottish Retina Service. He is a small precise man with the fastidious quality one would hope for in a surgeon. He was the man who saved Gordon Brown from total blindness.

The precocious young Brown, who had been fast-tracked to Edinburgh University at the age of just 16, had only been in the city a matter of days when he was diagnosed with a detached retina in his left eye. Towards the end of his final term at Kirkcaldy High School, he had been playing wing forward in a rugby match between the School First XV and Old Boys, he went down on the ball and took a kick on the head in a loose scrum.

Three operations were performed at the hospital. All failed. He was left permanently blind in his left eye, despite treatment that included lying still on his back in a darkened room for weeks at a time. Then, a few months later, while playing tennis, he noticed the same symptoms in his right eye.

"Much of what has been written about this is wrong," said Dr Chawla. "He had a vulnerability before the bang on the head. The first three operations were not botched. They were done by a good surgeon who was working with the technique that was available at the time which only had a 30 per cent success rate. The problem was that the only techniques available did not enable them to see where the retina was detached. I had learned a technique in Chicago using a binocular indirect ophthalmoscope - it was not done with a laser as is often said - which meant it was possible to see all the retina.

"He had one operation on his right eye, carried out by me, which restored his vision in that eye completely. With one eye, you lose your depth of vision which affects you catching a ball or driving a car - though you are still allowed to drive, he never has. He'd be legal to drive, but he doesn't."

Gordon's older brother John has said that Brown feared, as he lay in total darkness for weeks at a time, that he was going blind. "It made him more determined."

Dr Chawla is less sure. "Anyone who spent such a long time in hospital without success would be terrified of what was going to happen to the other eye. But I don't think it has shaped his character as some have suggested. That's cod psychology. He's a confident man full of bonhomie. He's a brave guy who just got on with his life."

The poster on the university campus sported the familiar silhouette of Che Guevara in his red-starred beret. The word "Revolucion!" was plastered across it. Yet closer inspection revealed it to be an advert for the Freshers' Week welcoming party of the Spanish and Latino Society. "Salsa instructor," it said. "Come early for free tapas". Whatever happened to student revolutionaries?

One of them, of course, has just become Prime Minister. "Red Gordon", as he was known in the early days - in addition to graduating with a first in history and a doctorate on "The Labour Party and Political Change in Scotland 1918-29" - got himself elected as rector aged just 24 and did battle with the Tory vice-chancellor over university investments in South Africa.

They were heady times. Brown took the university to court and won. He even managed to enlist the support of the university's chancellor, the Duke of Edinburgh. The university authorities were horrified, especially when they found out that Brown's girlfriend was Princess Margarita, the eldest daughter of the King of Romania, who happened to be the chancellor's god-daughter.

Things are a little less dramatic nowadays, says Josh MacAlister, the current president of the student union at Edinburgh. (They changed the rules to stop students standing for the post of rector shortly after Brown stepped down from the job). "We have just got the university to revoke Robert Mugabe's honorary degree, which is almost a flashback to Gordon Brown's campaign on university investment in apartheid.".

But the "golden age" of demos, sit-ins and public meetings is over. " The student movement is different nowadays," said MacAlister. "In Brown's day, the relationship was quite confrontational; today it's quite productive. We'll tell them when we think they are wrong but we share a lot of priorities - on widening access to university, on teaching standards, on contact time and we can have quite a lot of impact on all that."

Students in Edinburgh now interface not through political gatherings but through the internet, he said. "There were 5,000 students then and 25,000 now. More than 80 per cent of Edinburgh students have their own page on Facebook. That's the way we communicate with them."

And the Seventies debates between different brands of Marxism have gone. "People are more focused on outcomes rather than bickering about what the question is," MacAlister said. "Part of Thatcher's legacy is a more individualistic society; that's true in student politics too. The big issue is student accommodation. Edinburgh is an expensive city and we're campaigning to get the city council to introduce regulations to control dodgy landlords who don't do repairs or provide the services they should. A lot of people are quietly proud that the next PM comes from here," said MacAlister. "Overall, Gordon Brown's record over the past 10 years has been pretty good. Britain is a much better place now than it was then. But higher education has been reflective of Labour's strengths and weaknesses. They have got more people into university but top-up fees are a very crude way of paying for that.

"Our fear is he may be planning to raise the cap on top-up fees to £6,000 or even £10,000 a year. The timing on that will coincide with the 2009-10 general election. So he may be in for a real fight."

Gordon Brown's first foray into electoral politics was in the pivotal general election of 1979. That was when the Labour government of James Callaghan was defeated by Margaret Thatcher in what was to prove the first of four consecutive general election victories for the Tories.

Brown stood in Edinburgh South constituency, but lost to a Conservative. His opponent was Michael Ancram who went on to become deputy leader of the Tories. "There were 11,000 students in the constituency and, as student rector, he expected to win. He was shocked when he didn't. I don't recall Gordon being

particularly gracious," recalled the Tory grandee in his office in Portcullis House last week where the window offered an unusual and revealing view of the inner sanctums of the palace of Westminster with its spindly spires and hidden flying buttresses.

"As student rector, he set up a commission on the future of Edinburgh University and invited me to be on it. It was in the days before the expression "control freak" had been invented but he was a pretty determined figure. When the campaign began, we did quite a lot of public debates. He was perfectly civil. There were no left-wing rants. His technique was to analyse Margaret Thatcher's programme and forensically take it to pieces.

"Traditionally, all Scots MPs spoke at the Scottish Grand Committee but when he was finally elected to Parliament in 1983, Gordon avoided it. He had arrived four years later than he had intended and didn't have time for that. He had his eye on UK politics."

So much so that when he was offered his first frontbench post as shadow Scottish Secretary he turned it down, waiting until he was offered the job of spokesman on Trade and Industry in 1985. Within another two years, he was made shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury; there, when the shadow Chancellor, John Smith, took three months off to convalesce from his first heart attack in 1988, he made his mark with some brilliant Tory-baiting rhetoric that led the Conservative Chancellor, and later Prime Minster, John Major, to criticise Brown as "a specialist in personal abuse."

When John Smith became Labour leader, Brown was the natural to become shadow Chancellor. But he did more than follow his predecessor's traditional Labour tax-and-spend policies. He worked hard to establish an image of fiscal rectitude - committing Labour to following the Conservatives' spending plans for the first two years after taking power - and persuading Middle England that Labour could be trusted to run the economy. Once elected, he oversaw the longest period of sustained growth in UK economic history

"Politics is as much about luck as anything else and he got an economy on the up," said Ancram. "But to be fair he kept it on the up. Throughout his career he's been very focused, very ambitious. He positioned himself always to be in the right place at the right time."

Laura Spence was a pupil at a state comprehensive school in Whitley Bay. She was, in 1999, the only pupil of the school's 100 sixth formers to apply for a place at Oxford. Although she had 10 A* results in her GCSEs and, the press reported, five straight As in her A-levels she had been turned down by Magdalen where she had applied to read medicine after snobby interviewers decided she "did not show potential".

Gordon Brown may have made the necessary fiscal compromises to appease Middle England but he had never entirely shaken off the mantle of the class warrior. He lambasted the college in an address to trade unionists. "He concluded that the interviewing system was like a gentleman's club, biased against women, ethnic minorities and northerners," Professor Anthony Smith, who was president of Magdalen at the time, now recalls. The trouble was Brown had not bothered to check the facts before he launched a broadside in a speech to a trade union conference.

"We had 22 applicants for five places to read medicine," said Professor Smith. "All 22 had 10 A*s in their GCSEs. And Laura Spence, contrary to press reports, had not received her A-level results yet. Moreover, our records showed she had achieved good marks in her interview but had been poor in her written exam and the structured discussion. And of the five candidates who were successful candidates - three were women, three from ethnic minorities, two came from comprehensives, one came from Newcastle."

Almost every detail in Brown's attack was wrong. "For about a day and a half it looked bad and then the story began to turn around against Brown," said Professor Smith, reflecting on the incident eight years later. "He should have said something to exculpate himself." But he refused to own up to his mistake.

"It was the first blemish on the Brown image," said Professor Smith, "and revealed a number of characteristics. It indicated several layers of carelessness. It demonstrated an unwillingness to admit he's made a mistake. And its showed there's a stiffness, an unbendingness, about the man, which is sad since he has done so much good in other areas - he is the only politician, other than Nye Bevan, to have moved me to tears. His Gilbert Murray lecture for Oxfam was so well-informed, full of novel ideas and such passion

"The truth is that the whole class system is the root of the problem and you can't expect a university admissions tutor to change that. He doesn't have the levers of power. In any case, the Government's campaign to get 50 per cent of the population into universities needed a lot more thought. One wonders whether a lot of people who go to university now would do better if they were in out-and-out training in sports management or tourism or whatever." Not, one imagines, the kind of remarks to endear Gordon Brown any more greatly to the Oxbridge way of thinking.

So how well has Gordon Brown done as Chancellor? On the face of it, things look pretty good. He promised an end to boom-and-bust and has presided over the longest period of sustained growth in UK economic history. He pledged to bring down unemployment and has a record number of people in work.

And yet, as a nation, we are fairly economically illiterate. Most of us have no real idea of whether trouble is being stored up for the future. After unsuccessful forays to the Bank of England and the Treasury, where senior people would only talk off-the-record, I travelled to the other side of Parliament Square to try to find out.

Martin Weale is the director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. In the days before the Bank of England gained its independence, Mr Weale was one of the Treasury's "wise men" responsible for setting interest rates. He has also been an adviser to Britain's central bank. How had Gordon really done? "In terms of economic management, you can't say anything other than he's done a good job. The circumstances have been kind - the world economy has been fairly stable - but the British economy has a history of being more accident-prone than many and he's avoided that. He has inflation under control, the economy saving a lot and he has created space for a consumer boom."

In recent years, he has bent if not broken his self-imposed golden rule that the Government will borrow only to invest and not to fund current spending. "But - since we have had a steady growth rate, no recession, low inflation and unemployment kept down - his neglect of his golden rule," said Dr Weale, "did not constitute a substantial blow to his standing."

But what has, belatedly, registered with the public is his taxing of pensions which, some years on, has provoked significant resentment. "Broonie should be arraigned for grand larceny," said a pensioner from Aberdeen in the Glasgow Herald's chatroom. "I have paid into my pension fund for 37 years and had planned to retire at 60 with a large lump sum and a pension of £20k per annum. Thanks to Broonie, I will now have to retire when I'm 72 to enjoy the same pension benefits".

But Dr Weale is sanguine on that one. "If people want public spending, there have to be taxes and pensions income is as fair game as any other income. The real problem is that as a nation we just haven't saved enough - and there is no sign that Gordon Brown has given any thought to that at all. Pensions will be a far bigger problem in 10 years but he probably won't still be Prime Minister then."

Meanwhile, there have been flurries over the euro (which Brown once favoured but then changed his mind), on the sale of the Treasury's gold, (which critics say he flogged off too cheaply) and on the "buy now-pay later" public finance initiatives (which Martin Weale believes to be "on balance, a bad thing"). But none of those seemed to inflict any lasting damage on Brown's good name. What did most harm to Gordon Brown's reputation was the revelations about how he ran the Treasury.

"I know from my own time inside the Treasury," said Weale," that Treasury grade 5 assistant secretaries talked to far more senior civil servants in other ministries in ways which many people found downright offensive."

The Treasury has always had a finger in every pie but Brown has taken its control over other ministries to new levels - dismissing not just the views of their senior civil servants but those of government ministers too.

The accusation by Lord Turnbull, Permanent Secretary at the Treasury from 1988 to 2002, that he ran the Treasury with "Stalinist ruthlessness" treating cabinet colleagues with "more or less complete contempt" hit home. It has coloured the nation's view of the premiership to come.

Gordon had taken off his tie. But this was not some David Cameron-style "Ordinary Joe" sartorial pose. This was not about cool. It was about heat. This was Gordon Brown's tour of Africa.

It was a defining moment. He had thought the awkward stumbling photographer-encumbered visits to the schools and clinics of Tanzania and Mozambique were over. He had been back in his natural element, in a meeting of African finance ministers in an hotel in Cape Town. But then, Brown heard about the fire. A rapid blaze had swept through one of the townships a few minutes from the conference hotel. Some 12,000 people had been made homeless. It would seem callous not to visit.

On the way, he was briefed by a white aid worker. He would be meeting a local community worker. She was an amazing woman. She had already organised for the homeless to be taken into the homes of others in Langa township. She had a family living in her own tiny two room home. She made her living by frying sheep's intestines in the street and selling them to passers-by as snacks. No shortage of things to talk to her about then, everyone supposed. But when Gordon met her, amid the charred mattresses and scorched furniture of the wooden town his opening line was a corker. "Tell me," he asked the far-from-bewildered woman, "do you find it hard to get micro-credit?"

There in, a single vignette, is it all. The unmistakable gut-wrenching compassion for the world's poorest which has been with Brown since African missionaries visited his father's church in Kirkcaldy when he was a boy. His clumsy inability to do the touchy-feely public empathy which came naturally to Tony Blair. And the cut to the financial issue at the core of her poverty, with an attempt to find a solution to the woman's problems.

Gordon Brown was one of the members of Blair's Commission for Africa. His was one of the key intellects behind the analysis of its final report, which became the blueprint for the big promises of Gleneagles at the G8 summit that followed. Intriguingly of its aspirations on trade, aid and debt the only component which was fully delivered was the part for which Brown was responsible - the debt deal he pushed through at the G7 finance ministers meeting some months before Gleneagles. Some £38bn of that debt relief has already been put in place.

At the Catholic Church's aid agency Cafod, its director Chris Bain, two years on, seemed unsurprised. "There's a genuineness and an inbuilt compassion about him," said Mr Bain, at whose invitation Gordon Brown gave his definitive address on Africa and its problems in the Pope Paul VI lecture in 2004. "He's a long-term strategic thinker but more than that he wants to come up with the means to achieve what his vision demands. He's very focused on delivery and he tries to be creative".

It was Brown who came up with the idea of a spend now-pay later International Finance Fund (IFF) to finance Gleneagles. He dreamt up a massive vaccination bond scheme, and persuaded the Pope to buy the first one, ensuring massive headlines around the world. He invented the Advance Market Mechanism to guarantee to drug companies that the G8 will buy products they develop to treat African diseases which researchers would otherwise neglect knowing the poor could not afford to buy them.

"It's unusual for a politician to think in that degree of detail," says Mr Bain. "Brown sees opportunities, shapes them and goes for them. But behind it all is a real passion."

None of which will surprise those who knew that, as a schoolboy, Brown and his brother produced what they called "Scotland's only newspaper sold in aid of African refugees" on a rackety old duplicating machine in the manse. At the age of 82, their father was still knocking on doors to raise money for Christian Aid.

When Gordon later became Chancellor, he was inundated by a flood of pre-printed postcards signed by Jubilee 2000 supporters. Officials brought pile after pile in until he said: "I've got the message. I don't actually need to see any more."

"You'd better see this one," the civil servant said. "It's from your mother".

"The party I lead must have more than a set of policies - we must have a soul," Gordon Brown told his coronation conference in Manchester on Sunday. He used similar language the year before at the Labour Party conference when he announced: "I came into politics out of faith. Faith in people and their potential."

Just how religious a prime minister will Gordon Brown be? Unlike Tony Blair - who converted to Christianity at university and may not have finished his conversions yet - Brown was a Christian from the cradle. It is only recently that he has made any public acknowledgement of his religious background. And he comes from a very different style of Christianity.

Commentators routinely speak of it as Presbyterian or Calvinist, which fits nicely with their stereotypes about the miserable Scot. And indeed there are about Gordon Brown values associated with that tradition. At last year's Labour conference, he spoke of "duty, responsibility and respect for others... honesty and hard work... and that the things that mattered had to be worked for".

But Dr Doug Gay, a Church of Scotland minister who lectures in the Divinty Department at Glasgow University has just done a study of Gordon Brown's public pronouncements on religion, and come to a rather different conclusion. "There is almost nothing from the Calvinist tradition about Brown's public persona," Dr Gay says. "He relies almost entirely on the vocabulary of the Scottish Enlightenment. He speaks of churches only as important social actors in a secular society. He has privatised his faith and will be a much more secular figure than Blair was."

Many will be pleased to hear that, some will not. Shamim Miah was in the middle of organising a trip to Srebrenica and Auschwitz when I met him. He was taking a group of Christian and Muslim youths from his home town of Oldham, as part of an interfaith study project on genocide which will also be looking at Rwanda and Darfur. He was critical of the limited nature of one of Brown's preoccupations - defining Britishness.

"Gordon Brown defines Britishness in terms of its values rather than its history or institutions," he said. "That's good because the usual collection of memories of the past is quite selective. And it omits to see slavery, colonialism and empire from then point of view of those who suffered."

But there is more to identity than values he insists. "Driving round Oldham during the World Cup, it astonished me how many flags of St George were hanging from the windows of families of Pakistani and Bengali extraction. We need a far richer debate than one on shared values." And it needs to be handled with more sensitivity than Gordon Brown's lowest-common-denominator approach.

"Politicians think they are debating Britishness as a counterweight to Iraq. They want to make Muslims feel more included. But to young Muslims it feels just another kind of attack. I went to give a talk to Muslim kids recently and told them they should be proud of where we live and contribute to wider society. But I was given a grilling because the government had just told Muslims they must inform on extremists in their community. If the debate on Britishness is happening in an atmosphere of hostility it's not going to go well.

"The debate among young Muslims is much more nuanced. Yes it's about foreign policy but it's also about the role of imams, of women, of the marginalisation of young people in the Muslim community. It's complicated by their parents identities being defined by the mother country as it was in a time gone by and to which no one can return. We are offered two models - integration or assimilation - as bipolar opposites. But there can be shades of brown."

The new Prime Minister needs to widen his idea of what Britishness beyond the mere business of imposing a common set of values. "We cannot allow the state to define what's right and what isn't. Dissent, after all, is a very British thing."

There is something else about Gordon Brown. Back in Scotland, John Haldane, professor of philosophy at Britain's most ancient university, St Andrews, and a leading commentator on contemporary Scottish politics, has been musing on what sits in the newly-crowned Prime Minister's in-tray.

"Brown's tragedy," said Profesor Haldane, "is that the long-awaited ascent to office comes at a time when a long series of deep problems have surfaced - Iraq, the nature of the relationship with the US, the EU constitution, the West Lothian question, the economy developing problems with rising interest rates and the risk of a crash in house prices, the value of government bonds dropping, a looming pensions crisis, new pressures on the Union in both Scotland and Wales, the House of Lords reform unresolved."

He alighted upon the website of the gay journal the Pink Paper. It noted that "conveniently" Mr Brown has failed to vote on 14 separate occasions when issues relating to gay equality were voted on. So he looked around at other issues and found Brown had voted in only 19 per cent of the votes in the current parliament - well below average among MPs - with the figure even lower in the parliament before.

Perhaps, said Profesor Haldane, there is something in the quip by the former Treasury mandarin Lord Turnbull, who said that Gordon Brown had about him a "Macavity quality" and that "he is not there when there is dirty work to be done".

At the heart of the public figure is a gaping paradox. For a man who has spent his life on display - as the son of a minister, a student leader, an ambitious politician and, for a whole decade, our Chancellor - there are whole areas of his personality, views and inclinations to policy which remain an enigma.

No more. From today, he no longer has the great white walls of the Treasury to hide behind. We are about to discover the rest.

    Gordon Brown and the making of a Prime Minister, I, 28.6.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2717279.ece

Then and now.

Chalk and cheese.

Night and Day.

Black and white.

Blair and Brown . . .

A sombre arrival at Downing Street
was as carefully scripted as Blair’s ecstatic reception in 1997


June 28, 2007
From The Times
Ben Macintyre

On that May morning in 1997, I stood on the pavement of Downing Street and watched as Tony and Cherie Blair, locked together in a sort of ecstatic waltz, made their way through a crowd of flag-waving fans, high-fiving and beaming. The sun shone brilliantly from a cloudless sky. The crowd (of handpicked party faithful) screeched and swayed, many still tipsy from the victory party.

Yesterday Gordon Brown made the same journey, but without crowds or razzle-dazzle. He emerged from the official car, pallid and serious, looking more like an undertaker than a man who has just experienced a one-to-one meeting with the Queen on the most exciting day of his life. An overcast sky threatened rain. He paused and patted his pockets, opened the door for his wife, paused as if wondering whether he had left something in the boot, and then made his way to the microphone.

Mr Brown is inspiringly rubbish at the theatre of his new job, faultlessly uncomfortable. For ten years, we know, he has spent his every waking hour imagining this scene, and every sleeping moment dreaming of it, but when it came he still managed to seem refreshingly awkward.

Mr Blair, in the same place at the same moment a decade ago, had seized the microphone as if it were an Oscar, and wore his best aw-shucks-I-can’t-be-lieve-this-is-happening grin.

If Mr Blair’s entry to Downing Street was all champagne and complicated canap�s, then Mr Brown’s was a pint of heavy and a meat pie. He spoke of “new priorities” and “great opportunities”. There were echoes of the pulpit, as he pledged to be “strong in purpose, steadfast in will, resolute in action”.

When Mr Blair gave his doorstep speech, he was all but drowned out by cheering. The only accompaniment to Mr Brown’s address was the rattle of the camera shutters, and the sotto voce commentary of an American TV reporter who referred to him, pleasingly, as “Gordon Blair”, before correcting himself.

In 1997 I wrote that the crowd lining Downing Street were so rapturous in their reception “that it seemed the new Prime Minister and his wife might be dragged into their midst”. Mr Brown, by contrast, visibly keen to get to work, clearly had no intention of dragging out the process a moment longer than necessary.

The sombre Brown performance was, of course, as carefully scripted and choreographed as that of Mr Blair a decade earlier. It was as if some careful spin-doctor had studied the Blair ceremony of accession, and reversed it in every conceivable way: “Right: no flags, no cheering, someone get on to the Met Office and lay on some rain – and Gordon, try not to smile.”

The smile that did eventually appear on Mr Brown’s face might have been baked on. Deliberately and ponderously unflashy, his every word and action was intended to convey the unBlair, an emphatic Tony-lessness. He spoke of his childhood, his hometown, and his schooldays. He even quoted his school motto: “I will try my utmost.” It was brilliantly, upliftingly uncool.

Before Mr Brown’s non-triumphal entry into Downing Street, I made a pilgrimage to the place that was Granita, the fashionable Islington restaurant where, in 1994, the pact was forged by which Mr Blair would eventually hand over to Mr Brown.

Thirteen years later, the handover has finally happened, but much has changed. Granita is now a Tex-Mex diner called Desperados; and where the likes of Peter Mandelson once dined on drizzled truffle oil, the most exotic offering today is a Cactus Tequila Banger.

There were just two diners yesterday. Had they come to celebrate the long-delayed conclusion of the Granita pact? “Nah, we just fancied a chimi-changa.” That, too, seemed to fit with the calculated understatement of the day.

In 1997 Mr Blair’s children joined him on the threshold of power for a photo-op; there was no sign of the Brown children yesterday. Indeed, the house wore an abandoned look, its windows hung with lace curtains in need of a wash.

Sarah Brown, smart in red high heels, was plainly keen to get inside the front door, but for a few moments it refused to open, and the Browns were forced to linger on the doorstep a little longer, he smiling concretely and waving to a friend who wasn’t there in the nonexistent crowd. The door finally opened to a gust of applause from within.

It is entirely possible that Sarah and Gordon Brown then rushed upstairs, jumped up and down on the bed screaming, and ran all over Downing Street chanting: “Tony Blair . . . out of our hair.” But if so, they did it very quietly.

A large removal van emerged from the rear entrance to Downing Street, and the faint chant of the antiwar protesters drifted on a chilly wind from Whitehall. No one cheered, no one waved a flag or danced in the street, and it began to drizzle.

Mr Brown’s first public performance as Prime Minister had gone precisely to plan.

Old school ties: more mottoes

Floreat Etona (May Eton Flourish/ Let Eton Flourish) David Cameron, Eton, Windsor

Nous maintiendrons (We will maintain) Menzies Campbell, Hillhead High School, Glasgow

Industria (Industry/ Diligence) Tony Blair, Fettes, Edinburgh

Modeste, Strenue, Sancte (Be modest, be thorough and pursue righteousness) John Major, Rutlish school (then Grammar), southwest London

Inspire, Challenge, Achieve Margaret Thatcher, Kesteven and Grantham Girls’ School

“We haven’t got one, I’m afraid” James Callaghan, Portsmouth Northern Grammar School for Boys

Floreat Domus Chathamensis (May Chatham House flourish) Edward Heath, Chatham House Grammar, Kent

    Then and now. Chalk and cheese. Night and Day. Black and white. Blair and Brown . . ., Ts, 28.6.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1996704.ece

We've made it.

We're in

Brown day one:
Miliband likely foreign secretary,
Balls tipped for cabinet, education split

Thursday June 28, 2007
Guardian
Patrick Wintour, political editor

In a day of seismic shifts, stark contrasts and generous emotion, Gordon Brown yesterday finally entered Downing Street as prime minister, repeatedly promising change and immediately recasting his cabinet. Foreign secretary Margaret Beckett, health secretary Patricia Hewitt and justice secretary Lord Falconer will all lose their jobs.

It is expected that David Miliband, 41, the moderniser urged by some Labour MPs to challenge for the leadership, will be thrust into the Foreign Office - at three years older than the UK's youngest ever foreign secretary. If confirmed, it will be a bold move as he privately regards the intervention in Iraq as a great error.

Mr Brown began shaping his government last night, hours after taking control, holding a series of meetings with prospective ministers in his office at the House of Commons. Allies of Jack Straw said last night that they thought he would be appointed to the Ministry of Justice.

It is expected that Alan Johnson, education secretary, will move to health, repeatedly described by Mr Brown as his immediate priority. The education department is being split in two, with a department for children and a department for skills and higher education. Mr Brown's close ally Ed Balls is tipped to be cabinet minister for children and schools.

It is also understood Mr Brown has been speaking to Lady Williams, the 76-year-old former Liberal Democrat leader in the Lords. Lib Dem aides said that it appeared no specific role was on offer. She refused to comment on the meeting.

The full lineup will be revealed today and is likely to reflect Mr Brown's promise, on the steps of No 10, to build a new government with fresh priorities.

In solemn tones, he vowed: "I will be strong in purpose, steadfast in will, resolute in action, in the service of what matters to the British people, meeting the concerns and aspirations of our whole country." He reiterated his aim of a government of all talents, beyond narrow party interest, and suggested that he himself personified the change.

"I have heard the need for change: change in our NHS; change in our schools; change with affordable housing; change to build trust in government; change to protect and extend the British way of life."

He ended his first remarks by citing his school motto: "'I will try my utmost.' This is my promise to all of the people of Britain. And now let the work of change begin."

He yesterday showed his planned cabinet to Mr Blair, who felt content it was not a cull of his supporters. The outgoing health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, told Mr Brown that she wanted to quit, recognising that the priority of balancing the books had lost her NHS staff support. The leader of the Lords, Lady Amos, is to become the EU representative to the African Union.

Mrs Beckett fought hard to keep her job as foreign secretary, but, in a difficult conversation, Mr Brown said he needed fresh faces. It is thought he may bring into government Mark Malloch Brown, the former deputy secretary general at the UN, who has been a fierce critic of the Iraq war.

Rumours also swirled as to the identity of a fresh Tory defector to be unveiled this week by Mr Brown; putative identity ranged from Lord Patten to Malcolm Rifkind.

Mr Blair, in a bravura performance at his final prime minister's questions, received an unprecedented two-minute standing ovation. As the Labour benches rose, David Cameron stood and beckoned his benches to join the tribute. Only some nationalist MPs stayed in their seats.

Mr Blair ended by conceding he was not "a great House of Commons man" but had always respected it. He closed his 24-year parliamentary career by saying: "If it is, on occasions, the place of low skulduggery, it is more often the place for the pursuit of noble causes. I wish everyone, friend or foe, well. That is that. The end."

He then travelled by train to tell his local party in Sedgefield he had secured his coveted post as Middle East special envoy and would leave the Commons. A writ for the Sedgefield byelection on July 19 or 26 will be moved today. Mr Blair, who will travel to the Middle East in the next fortnight, believes his first task is to reunite warring Palestinian factions.

    We've made it. We're in, G, 28.6.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/gordonbrown/story/0,,2113263,00.html

Go to Australia

or use your own judgment

Thursday June 28, 2007
Guardian
Richard Norton-Taylor


After the pomp and ceremony of his departure from Buckingham Palace, his speech on the doorstep at No 10, and a partial reshuffle, Gordon Brown's role as prime minister began with an onerous and somewhat sobering task. Tony Blair, when faced with the duty, immediately went white in the face, said onlookers. John Major couldn't face it: he went home for the weekend.

As prime minister, with ultimate responsibility for Britain's nuclear deterrent, Mr Brown has to write a letter, in his own hand, giving instructions detailing what the UK's response should be in the event of a pre-emptive nuclear attack.

The letter will be opened only by the commander of a British Trident submarine, who would have to assume that the prime minister was no longer in a position to take "live" command of the situation. The options are said to include the orders: "Put yourself under the command of the US, if it is still there"; "go to Australia"; "retaliate"; "or use your own judgment".

Each new prime minister writes the letter as soon as he or she takes office after being "indoctrinated" by the chief of the defence staff, who explains precisely what damage a Trident missile could cause. The letter is destroyed when they leave office.

According to Peter Hennessy, professor of contemporary history at Queen Mary, London University, Mr Blair "went white" on being receiving his briefing. "The nuclear bit shakes them all. Then you realise you are prime minister, at a deeper level," he said.

Though nothing is known of Mr Blair's written instruction, James Callaghan is said to have authorised retaliation. When John Major had to make the decision, he cancelled a weekend at Chequers and went home to Huntingdon.

Mr Brown's orders would be sent by special low frequency or satellite communications to the submarine commander. They would first be verified by two officials in the Cabinet Office, and then two at the armed forces' permanent joint headquarters in Northwood, north-west London.

Mr Brown's new job allows him to summon whenever he wants the heads of MI5 and MI6, the chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, and the chief of the defence staff, Sir Jock Stirrup. They, in turn, now have direct access to Britain's new leader.

    Go to Australia or use your own judgment, G, 28.6.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,,2113203,00.html

Hewitt leads exit of women

from Brown cabinet

· Lady Amos follows Armstrong, while Beckett loses Foreign Office post
· Veteran of Labour's difficult years rejects new job to be with ill mother

Thursday June 28, 2007
Guardian
Will Woodward, chief political correspondent


Patricia Hewitt resigned from the government last night after six years in cabinet and a tumultuous two years as health secretary. She thanked Gordon Brown for an offer to stay in a top post, although she had been certain to be moved from health.

The leader of the Lords, Lady Amos, the first black woman cabinet minister, also left the government, nominated by Mr Brown for the new post of EU representative to the African Union.

The resignations mean that, along with that previously announced of social exclusion minister Hilary Armstrong, Mr Brown is losing at least three experienced women from the cabinet; Margaret Beckett's position in the cabinet is also in doubt.

In an exchange of letters, Ms Hewitt (pictured below) said: "When we met last month, I explained I had decided, for personal reasons, to stand down from government. While I very much appreciate your offer for me to remain in cabinet, I feel this is the right moment for me to give more time to my constituency and my family - something my family would say is long overdue." It is understood Ms Hewitt's mother in Australia is seriously ill. Ms Hewitt will chair a manifesto committee for Mr Brown, on policy for Europe.

The incoming health secretary, expected to be Alan Johnson, faces a possibe strike by nurses, rebel doctors energised against flawed online recruitment, and a service shaken by cuts to rescue NHS trusts from deficit. Mr Brown has declared the NHS to be his most immediate problem, and Tory leader David Cameron has also declared it his priority.

In his letter to Ms Hewitt, Mr Brown said: "I want to pay tribute to the progress that, as secretary of state for health, you have made in terms of reducing waiting times and driving forward reform in the health service, and in the wider field of public health, especially the complete ban on smoking in public places which is about to come into force - which will lead to health benefits for years to come. You should be justly proud of your achievements."

As head of the National Council for Civil Liberties, Ms Hewitt once employed deputy leader Harriet Harman. During her party's most difficult times in the 1980s, Ms Hewitt served as former leader Neil Kinnock's press secretary and policy chief from 1983 to 1989. She worked for Mr Brown as economic secretary from 1998 to 1999, and she joined the cabinet as trade and industry secretary in 2001.

Lady Amos, a former chief executive of the Equal Opportunities Commission, became a peer in 1997 and then whip in the Lords. She joined the cabinet as international development secretary in 2003, and moved to be leader of the Lords.

Twelve months ago she was expected to take a big UN job, which fell through. Critics ask why the lord chancellor, Lord Falconer, rather than her, led the government's response in the upper house to a Commons vote in March seeking for an elected upper house. This year the New Nation newspaper named her as Britain's most powerful black woman. Mr Brown offered the EU post to "allow you to apply your experience to the increasingly important relationship between Britain, Europe and Africa", in an exchange of letters.

Downing Street said no cabinet posts were formally made until the complete list today, with junior posts tomorrow.

Mr Brown was quick to establish control at No 10 yesterday. His first formal act as prime minister was to revoke the order in council allowing special advisers to instruct civil servants. The prime minister's spokesman, Michael Ellam, said it cleared the way for Mr Brown to formally appoint his team. It also re-established Whitehall formality eroded over 10 years. Tony Blair's 1997 order enabled two political appointees, Jonathan Powell, chief of staff, and Alastair Campbell, press spokesman, to give orders to officials; one went in 2003, the other left yesterday.

Mr Brown confirmed 10 top appointments - a mix of special advisers and career civil servants, most of whom work closely with him and the core of his Downing Street team; many are in their 30s.

A beefed-up Cabinet Office - theoretically one step from No 10, in fact not so - includes Jeremy Heywood, made "head of domestic policy and strategy". Described by a non-Brownite minister as the most able civil servant of his generation, he was a principal private secretary to Tony Blair, and was also formerly head of UK investment banking at Morgan Stanley. "The intention is to strengthen the function of the Cabinet Office in coordinating cabinet business," the PM's spokesman said.

    Hewitt leads exit of women from Brown cabinet, G, 28.6.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/gordonbrown/story/0,,2113351,00.html

Sketch

The day the entire House

left some for Mr Manners

Thursday June 28, 2007
Guardian
Simon Hoggart

'We won't miss you at all!' cried Cherie Blair to the press as she left No 10 for the last time. She must have been waiting for the moment for months. As so often, she said out loud what her husband used only to think.
Blair played the media brilliantly, so it was like Mrs Alfred Brendel complaining about piano tuners.

No matter. The day began with the arrival in the chamber of Quentin Davies, the Tory apostate. A farmer, half of whose sheep once died, Mr Davies used to be met by Labour cries of "Baaa!" Yesterday he was cheered wildly, Gordon Brown's weird, brick-faced housewarming present.

Tony Blair arrived. He began, as always, with tributes to fallen soldiers. His voice on the verge of cracking, he talked about the armed forces. "I know there are those who think that they face these dangers in vain. I do not, and I never will." That hovered on the edge of bad taste: was he using the dead to back his case for war?

But we raced on. He ended his weekly rote recital of appointments by saying: "I will have no further meetings today. Or any other day." The house, quivering with sentimental anticipation, chortled.

The next 27 minutes were a bizarre mixture of the traditional and the frenetic. We had all the statistics, the shorter waiting lists, the health spending and the exam results in once failing schools that would not shame Harvard alumni, recited from an ancient, time-honoured litany.

But David Cameron produced an encomium. "No one can doubt the huge efforts he has made in the public service ... considerable achievements which will endure ..."

We know that the Tory leader is trying to establish a Golden Age of Blair, if only to contrast it with the dark, dour, dire Age of Brown we are entering, but this seemed genuine.

Mr Blair thanked him for his "courtesy". Suddenly that was the word of the day. Ming Campbell praised his courtesy; Tony Blair thanked him for his courtesy. And Ian Paisley. The entire house was leaving some for Mr Manners.

A heavily prepared joke about him getting his P45 was, improbably, tacked on to an answer about the thousands of people who had lost their jobs. Richard Younger-Ross, a Lib Dem bag person, brain as haywire as his hair, attempted a complicated question about disestablishment. Mr Blair wearily threw away: "I am not really bothered about that one." You can do that when you're leaving.

Then it was time to go. He admitted he had never been a great House of Commons man - yup - but he did pay it the tribute of "fearing" it. "The tingling apprehension I had at three minutes to 12 today I felt as much 10 years ago."

"I don't like you, you're scary" seems a curious farewell, especially as they never laid a glove on him. MPs have, with rare exceptions, been the poodle's poodles.

Then some of his famous clunky phrases: politics had "harsh contentions" but it was where "people stand tall". And if there could be "low skulduggery", it was more often a place for "the pursuit of noble causes". Again his voice was on the brink of breaking up.

As he left, by prearrangement all Labour MPs rose for a standing ovation - strictly against the rules, but who would stop them? Cameron waved the Tories to their feet, and they stood less willingly, only a handful clapping. But all of them stood.

As he left, Gordon Brown slapped him on the back once, to say "well done", then again, as if to say, "that's the exit, there".

Over in Downing Street we learned that Mr Brown cannot wave. He raised a hand to hip height, as if patting a passing horse.

"Wave!" shouted the snappers. He tried, but failed. Finally he hoisted an unwilling arm, and disappeared inside to "start the work of change", or perhaps of "undoing the damage left by the previous occupant".

    The day the entire House left some for Mr Manners, G, 28.6.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,,2113205,00.html

The old and the new


Thursday June 28, 2007
The Guardian
Leader

So much changed yesterday between noon, when Tony Blair began his extraordinary and sentimental final Commons session, and 3pm, when Gordon Brown spoke to the nation as prime minister, that it is easy to overlook the one thing that continued. The spirit of the political project shaped by the two men has always placed consensus ahead of confrontation, an urge to capture the centre of politics by blurring old lines of ideological division. Mr Blair has managed to do it brilliantly for a decade, culminating yesterday with a prime minister's questions like no other, lauded by Ian Paisley, clapped out of the chamber, celebrated as a leader above party.

Mr Brown, who spoke with heavy authority outside No 10, will never achieve - or want to achieve - his predecessor's easy populism. He will not weave his magic over Westminster as Mr Blair did one last time yesterday. But in a fundamental way he has suggested this week that the New Labour strategy he helped create will not change. "I will reach out beyond narrow party interest; I will build a government that uses all the talents," said the new prime minister. Mr Blair left British politics yesterday in a unity of appreciation; Mr Brown is seeking to begin his government with a unity of purpose. He is fighting off any urge to lapse into party tribalism, demonstrating this through tricks such as his offer to Paddy Ashdown and his wooing of Quentin Davies. It is an approach that has confounded sceptics and which should ease his acceptance by voters, who do not want politicians to do battle over artificial divides. There has been much talk at Westminster of the choice between "old Gordon" and "new Gordon" - an exclusive, awkward and secretive politician or a man who can be astute, flexible and open. Both sides of his character exist. In the speech that opened his premiership yesterday, Mr Brown showed that he knows which one must dominate if he is to succeed.

In the warm glow of Mr Brown's coronation, when the lion has sat down with the lamb and Blairites are talking to Brownites, when the polls are turning and the Tories have lost their nerve, Labour has found sudden confidence. The mood seemed to change in Manchester last weekend when Mr Brown became leader - a shared realisation that the party wants to win again and can. It provides Mr Brown with a magnificent start, far better than anyone had imagined was possible in the awful days of last September. But it carries with it a danger: some in the party (though not its new leader) may lose the fear of defeat. They may think that Mr Blair's departure is enough in itself to signify the change that Mr Brown yesterday repeatedly promised to bring. A new prime minister - any new prime minister - is a symbol of tremendous change. The differences in style, behaviour and interests between Mr Blair and Mr Brown add to the sense that something significant has shifted.

But as Mr Brown knows, his arrival is only the start of renewal. In the next few weeks Labour's mood should lighten further; the drama of a new cabinet with a changed agenda ought to guarantee it. But it will have to be underpinned by real alterations if the optimism is to be sustained. That means Mr Brown's government of all the talents needs to come into being; it means he must sustain his engaging strategy of showing that he is not the man his enemies said he was. It also means a change of tack on Iraq and public services - led, as he said yesterday, by the NHS. His revoking of the power that allowed Alastair Campbell to command civil servants was another symbolic start.

Yesterday brought an amazing impromptu parliamentary celebration of Mr Blair: a veneer of agreement about a man who has left much undone, and much division, underneath. Mr Brown may prove a quieter, less flashy prime minister. But he wants unity too, and the task of achieving it will be as hard as ever.

    The old and the new, G, 28.6.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2113102,00.html

He might not do theatre,

but Brown can still surprise

There was nothing of the circus about yesterday's entrance.
But the new leader looks to be erecting a bigger tent than Blair's

Thursday June 28, 2007
The Guardian
Jackie Ashley

Labour figures always said they wanted a smooth and orderly transition. Well, they got that all right, but yesterday's passing of the baton from Blair to Brown was so smooth as to barely make a wave. In fact it was described as an anticlimax by many watching at Westminster. What a contrast with the day Tony Blair arrived in Downing Street. Then, that brave new dawn saw rows of flag-waving admirers lining the road and a national mood of exhilaration. To say it was a triumphant entrance was an understatement. As one of the many reporters watching the day's events back in 1997, I remember Blair's people hopping in and out of that famous front door - exclaiming that they had been trying out all the sofas - before they sat down to a splendid lunch sent in by the trendy London restaurant the River Cafe. The sense of excitement about a new political era was palpable.

Gordon Brown's entrance could not have been more different. It was deliberately understated, with no cheering supporters. All Brown faced were the massed ranks of the media, to whom he made a formal speech verging on the dreary. He dredged up his old school motto, like a boy scout promising to do his best. If he'd finished by saying "dib, dib, dib" it wouldn't have been a shock. Then there was an awkward moment when he and Sarah turned to walk into their new home only to find nobody was opening the door. Cue a few more moments of stiff smiling and waving, before he disappeared inside.

It was all, according to one Blairite I spoke too, "very clunking". Another said it was about as exciting as a wet Wednesday in Gairloch. And, yes, it must be admitted that Brown doesn't do theatre. Nor, come to that, does he do small talk, so goodness only knows what he spent 50 minutes talking to the Queen about. And yet, despite all that it would be a fool who underestimates Brown. David Cameron certainly doesn't, having seen his long-standing poll lead evaporate as soon as the first removal men arrived in Downing Street.

Where Blair is a performer, Brown is a strategist. He has had long enough to prepare for his arrival in Downing Street, and it's entirely characteristic that he gave very little thought to the choreography of the day. All he wanted to do was give an impression of change, and those changes will come not in high-blown rhetoric, but in the bricks and mortar of government and new policies.

With the departure of several key Blairites already announced, Brown has ample opportunity to reshape the government. The list of familiar faces already known to be going is long: apart from Blair and John Prescott, Hilary Armstrong, John Reid, Patricia Hewitt, Margaret Beckett and Lord Goldsmith are all leaving their jobs. That gives the prime minister plenty of room for manoeuvre, and to prove that he really can extend his administration to include all comers.

Yesterday saw surprisingly little talk about Labour's newest recruit, Quentin Davies, the former rightwing Tory MP. Partly this was because Cameron chose to bid a statesmanlike farewell to Tony Blair at prime minister's questions, which would have made any taunting of the Tories about the defection of Davies look cheap. But behind the scenes there were rumours flying of other Tory defections, with the possibility that one of them could be offered a job in Brown's "government of all the talents".

Cynics have inevitably scoffed that Davies wasn't much of a catch, that he must have suffered some personal slight, or that his defection was just a meaningless stunt. But in truth Davies was a five-star, gold-studded catch, not least because of his piercing resignation letter to Cameron, which went to the heart of the charge against the Cameroons: that they stand for nothing and lack all conviction. This is how Brown wants the battle lines to be drawn - Brown as the man with values who knows what he stands for; Cameron as the slick PR man who blows with the wind.

It's hardly surprising that Brown's stolid determination appeals to some conservatives. His emphasis on duty and responsibility to others chimes with some traditional conservative values. That's part of the reason why the Daily Mail has given Brown a relatively easy ride so far. A Conservative friend jokes that "Tories for Gordon" is a flourishing group and predicts that the son of the manse from Kircaldy could win many votes from the smooth-talking old Etonian.

Expect to be underwhelmed by Gordon the performer. He will never equal Blair when it comes to showmanship, and nor does he want to. But this quiet transition could herald even bigger changes than the ones we saw back in 1997. It would be the ultimate surprise if Gordon's tent proved to be larger than Tony's - but right now it looks entirely possible.

    He might not do theatre, but Brown can still surprise, G, 28.6.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2113311,00.html

Prime Minister Brown:

A day of departures, drama - and destiny

Published: 28 June 2007
The Independent
By Andrew Grice, Political Editor
 

It was an emotional day. One on which the normal laws of politics were suspended. Tony Blair was cheered out of the Commons with a standing ovation that broke all the rules. Earlier, his double bed, running machine and exercise bike were removed from the front door of No 10 in the full glare of the television cameras.

The outgoing Prime Minister tried to treat the day as "business as usual". Of course, it was nothing of the sort. He started his preparations for his weekly Commons joust with David Cameron on schedule at 8am. While there were briefings on the floods and his new job as international envoy to the Middle East, he also needed more jokes than usual. He popped a copy of his P45 form into his file, and later brandished it at the dispatch box. Other funny lines were rehearsed but not used.

Even to the end, Mr Blair was shadowed by Iraq. Anti-war protesters outside the gates of Downing Street were joined by people protesting against NHS cuts - two potent issues at the top of Mr Brown's in-tray.

In the Commons, Iraq also loomed large. A packed chamber fell silent when a sombre Mr Blair paid his weekly tribute to the latest servicemen to die in Iraq and Afghanistan. He went further, praising the dedication of Britain's armed forces. "I have never come across people of such sustained dedication, courage and commitment," he said. And, using a word we have not heard him say often, he added: "I am truly sorry about the dangers they face today in Iraq and Afghanistan."

But the overall mood was favourable to Mr Blair. Mr Cameron paid a generous tribute to him and wished his family well. "That's nice," said Cherie Blair, sitting in a gallery high above the chamber with her four children, including seven-year-old Leo.

"That's it, the end," an emotional Mr Blair said as he concluded a brief farewell statement at the end of Prime Minister's Questions. Mr Brown patted Mr Blair on the back and led an unprecedented two-minute standing ovation by Labour MPs. Only a few Tories joined it at first but Mr Cameron waved his troops to their feet.

The standing ovation continued long after Mr Blair left the chamber for the last time. As he walked through Portcullis House on his way back to No 10 to say a final farewell to his staff, a group of schoolchildren and visitors broke into spontaneous applause. It seemed that Mr Blair had achieved the objective of an embarrassing leaked memo about his long goodbye - to bow out with " the crowds wanting more". As they left the Commons chamber, several women Labour MPs were in tears, including Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, and Jacqui Smith, the Chief Whip. So was Phil Woolas, the Local Government minister. "It was like a wedding and a funeral rolled into one," one minister said. A diehard ultra-Blairite added: "What have we done? We will miss him."

Despite the outbreak of consensus, normal political hostilities resumed immediately afterwards. Outside the chamber, Labour MPs greeted and shook hands with their surprise new recruit, Quentin Davies, who defected to Labour on Tuesday. Left-wingers even tried to persuade him to join the Campaign Group.

But some Tories could not disguise their anger at Mr Davies. Alistair Burt, a fellow pro-European, told him sharply: "You are dishonest. You are a wretched man. You are a wretched 24-hour hero." Mr Davies replied: "Don't be stupid," before other MPs intervened to break up the argument. Mr Davies looked comfortable enough sitting two rows behind Mr Blair on the Labour benches but later cut a solitary figure as he lunched alone at Portcullis House. A waiter scooped up his plate before he had finished his lunch when he went to buy a drink, and he had to chase after him.

The carefully choreographed day went mostly to plan. There was an unscripted remark from Cherie Blair as the Blairs left No 10 to go to Buckingham Palace for the Prime Minister to tender his resignation. "I don't think we'll miss you," she told the assembled media in Downing Street with a smile. And not the all crowds were wanting more: when the Blairs left the Palace at 1.40pm after less than half an hour, an egg was thrown at their Jaguar car.

The spotlight was moving quickly to Mr Brown. He emerged with his wife on to the third floor of a refurbished Treasury building, lined with staff who applauded him. On the ground floor, the applause continued, and he stopped to shake hands with several officials in the crowd. He even returned for an encore after saying goodbye to his ministers. The Treasury crowds were definitely "wanting more".

The Browns spent 55 minutes with the Queen, travelling to the Palace in his Treasury six-year-old Vauxhall Omega but leaving in a prime ministerial Jaguar. On his return to Downing Street, he looked nervous as he approached the microphone to address the cameras. It was a low-key affair, a deliberate contrast with the flag-waving crowds of "ordinary people" who lined Downing Street when Mr Blair took office 10 years ago. (It turned out that most were hand-picked Labour Party members - a metaphor for the PR of the Blair era.)

There was an awkward pause at the famous black front door, as Mr Brown appeared to hesitate over how long to linger for the photographers. Downing Street staff took pictures of Mr Brown from the window with their mobile telephones as he addressed the media.

Led by Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, the staff crowded into the lobby and applauded Mr Brown as he entered.

He set to work immediately, addressing the troops. "I don't want to be called anything other than Gordon," Britain's new Prime Minister said, going further than his predecessor's "call me Tony" edict to his Cabinet in 1997, which did not apply to staff.

Mr Brown told his new team he knew it had been "an emotional day" for them because they had said goodbye to "a great leader and a great family". Thanking them for their welcome, he said: "Let's work together." He added it had been "an interesting day" for him. "It's not every day you meet the Queen at 1.30pm, become the Prime Minister at 2pm, speak to the President at 3pm, and get told by Sarah to put the kids to bed at 7pm."

While Mr Brown began work on his cabinet reshuffle, which will be announced today, in Westminster, the Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, was resigning "for personal reasons".

But Mr Blair had to carry his own overnight bag at King's Cross as he boarded a train for Darlington. The two friends-turned-rivals, whose fortunes have been bound together for so long, had finally diverged.

Date with destiny

10am Removal men load the Blairs' possessions into a van.

11.50am Mr Blair leaves Downing Street for the Commons. He is met by anti-war protesters.

12pm Mr Blair takes his seat for final Prime Minister's Questions.

12.37pm He leaves the chamber to a standing ovation.

1pm Mr Blair says goodbye to Downing Street staff and poses for photographs with his family.

1.17pm Mr Blair arrives at Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation to the Queen.

1.40pm He leaves the Palace.

3.40pm The Blairs leave King's Cross on train to Sedgefield.

5.18pm The Middle East negotiating Quartet announces it has appointed Mr Blair as its envoy.

5.24pm Mr Blair's resignation as MP for Sedgefield announced.

8pm Patricia Hewitt resigns.

    Prime Minister Brown: A day of departures, drama - and destiny, I, 28.6.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2717275.ece

Gordon Brown

Assumes Leadership in Britain

June 27, 2007
The New York Times
By ALAN COWELL

LONDON, June 27 — On a day of old pageants and new promises, Gordon Brown took over Britain’s political leadership from Tony Blair today after years in waiting as the prime minister’s sometimes loyal, sometimes impatient lieutenant.

The moments when both men went separately to Buckingham Palace — Mr. Blair to quit and Mr. Brown to assume office — were heavily symbolic, the closing acts of a decade since Mr. Blair came to power with a landslide victory in 1997 that set Britain on course for bellicose campaigns abroad and relative prosperity at home.

Mr. Blair’s last few hours included a remarkable exchange in parliament with David Cameron, the leader of the opposition Conservatives, who has routinely sought to mock and belittle the Prime Minister’s political record at the weekly encounters known as Prime Minister’s Questions.

But the half-hour session ended today with legislators from both government and opposition rising to give Mr. Blair a highly unusual standing ovation. As he wound up his speech in parliament, Mr. Blair, seen often as something of a showman, declared: “I wish everyone, friend and foe, well — and that is that: the end.”

Attending parliament for the last time as prime minister, Mr. Blair seemed calm and unemotional, cracking jokes with some legislators. But he referred in more somber tones to the British troops he has deployed alongside American forces, saying he was “truly sorry about the dangers they face today in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“Whatever view people take of my decisions, I think there is only one view to take of them: they are the bravest and the best,” he said of British troops.

Mr. Blair is expected to become the senior Middle East peace envoy and he said in parliament that the region’s crisis demanded a “huge intensity of focus and work.”

Mr. Cameron praised Mr. Blair’s “remarkable achievement of being prime minister for 10 years.” For his part, Mr. Blair thanked Mr. Cameron for being “most proper, correct and courteous in his dealings with me” — an unusually good-natured trade of pleasantries between two arch-rivals.

In some ways, though, Mr. Blair’s most successful rival, Gordon Brown, was sitting beside him on the green leather benches of parliament — not facing him from the opposition side.

For years, Mr. Brown has been chafing to become prime minister under the terms of a reported agreement between the two men dating to a dinner conversation in north London in 1994. While he has been Chancellor of the Exchequer for 10 years — effectively running the economy and much else — he has been accused by his critics of pressuring Mr. Blair to step aside.

Speaking for the first time from the steps of the prime minister’s official residence at 10 Downing Street after meeting the queen, Mr. Brown cited the motto of his school in the Scottish town of Kirkcaldy. “I will try my utmost,” he said in measured and serious tones. “This is my promise to all the people of Britain. And now, let the work of change begin.”

Mr. Brown’s meeting with the queen at Buckingham Palace was an unusually lengthy one at 55 minutes. While he was there, his unarmored Vauxhall saloon car was replaced with an armor-plated Daimler, reflecting the heightened security arrangements associated with his new office.

“This will be a new government with new priorities,” he proclaimed at Downing Street, saying he would be ‘’strong in purpose”.

Setting out his vision in the broadest of terms, he declared: “I want the best of chances for everyone. That is my mission.” His wife, Sarah, stood just off to his right before the couple entered the residence at No. 10 through the familiar shiny black door.

In political terms, the move was a big one, but physically it was modest: as Chancellor of the Exchequer, his office was next door at No. 11.

“I will build a government that uses all the talents,” he said, promising to “reach out beyond” the Labor party to bring others into his government in what he called “a new spirit of public service to make our nation what it can be.”

His predecessor, Mr. Blair, set records for the Labor Party by winning three straight election victories and in September 2004, several months before the last one in May 2005, he said he was ready to serve a full third term, usually four or five years. But that pledge crumbled under sustained pressure from Mr. Brown’s supporters, who mounted a revolt against Mr. Blair last year, forcing him to commit himself publicly to an earlier departure.

Underscoring the finality and abruptness of the moment, television cameras filmed the spectacle of a large moving van outside 10 Downing Street as workers carried out the prime minister’s personal effects, including an exercise bike. Under British tradition, outgoing and incoming prime ministers swap places at 10 Downing Street without a lengthy transition, and often on the same day. But Mr. Blair has choreographed one of the longest farewells, announcing seven weeks ago that he would quit on June 27.

Even without the pressure from Mr. Brown, Mr. Blair faced dwindling popularity because of public mistrust over the war in Iraq. Today, a handful of protesters gathered on Whitehall, opposite the Prime Minister’s office, to demand the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq.

From parliament, Mr. Blair returned briefly to Downing Street before heading to Buckingham Palace. His audience with the Queen was separate from that of Mr. Brown a few minutes later.

Mr. Brown’s rise to power without the validation of a general election was the first in British politics in the 17 years since the Conservative Party ousted Margaret Thatcher and replaced her with John Major. But, unlike Mrs. Thatcher’s bitter and tearful departure, Mr. Blair chose his own moment to go and Mr. Brown displayed a quiet readiness to wait a few more weeks before taking over.

The new Prime Minister has promised accelerated domestic reform on schools, housing and public health and changes in the way Britain goes to war, giving parliament more of a say. In a series of written responses published in The Independent newspaper today, Mr. Brown acknowledged that “mistakes were made in our planning for what happened after the removal of Saddam, and I think it’s important to learn the lessons and to go forward.”

Mr. Brown sought unsuccessfully to co-opt the leader of the small opposition Liberal Democrats into his prospective government last week. Mr. Brown also took the fight to the Conservatives, scoring a political coup by persuading a mid-ranking Conservative, Quentin Davies, to defect on Tuesday in advance of his rise to power.

Part of the reason for Mr. Blair’s unpopularity among some Britons was his perceived subservience to the United States and President Bush in particular, earning him the nickname “Bush’s poodle.”

But in an interview in The Sun tabloid today, Mr. Bush went out of his way to depict the relationship in a different light. “I’ve heard he’s been called Bush’s poodle. He’s bigger than that. This is just background noise, a distraction.”

Mr. Bush continued: “We’ve served together during a time of war, and shared the same determination to succeed. We analyzed the enemy the same way — and found each other in the same foxhole.”

    Gordon Brown Assumes Leadership in Britain, NYT, 27.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/world/europe/27cnd-Blair.html?hp

‘The Queen’ Got It Wrong:

No Hands Are Kissed

June 27, 2007
The New York Times
By ALAN COWELL

LONDON, June 27 — It had been so often foretold as to seem an anticlimax. But finally — and not quite as in the movie starring Helen Mirren — Gordon Brown got his “Queen moment” today when he took over from Tony Blair as prime minister of Britain.

By long tradition and constitutional custom, both men paid visits to Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, where the gold and blue royal standard fluttered aloft to signify that the monarch was, in fact, in residence. (The red, white and blue Union Jack flies in its place when she is not).

For the Queen, there was, perhaps, a hint of déjà vu: Mr. Brown is the 11th prime minister to hold office since her reign began in 1952. And, as with all the others, the details of the encounter were kept secret — save for one assertion from Buckingham Palace: the movie “The Queen” got it wrong.

Technically, the moment when the Queen first greets a new prime minister is called “Kissing Hands” — and that’s what happened in the movie, when Mr. Blair, played by the actor Michael Sheen, physically knelt to kiss the hand of the monarch, played by Ms. Mirren, as he took office in 1997.

But a spokesperson for Buckingham Palace said shortly before Mr. Brown’s encounter today that “there will be no kneeling or kissing of hands — that is not something that has happened in modern-day politics.”

The Court Circular, the official bulletin of the royal family’s activities, “will record that ‘the Prime Minister Kissed Hands on Appointment,’ ” the royal website, www.royal.gov.uk, says. “This is not literally the case.

“In fact, the actual kissing of hands will take place later, in Council,” the website continues, referring to the Privy Council, the time-honored assembly of the Queen and her close advisors, including cabinet ministers.

Except that these days, there is no actual hand-kissing then, either. “It’s just a meeting,” the spokesperson said, citing royal rules to insist on anonymity.

The encounter at the palace is the beginning of regular weekly meetings between the Queen and the Prime Minister, reflecting the constitutional arrangement by which the monarch, as head of state, may undertake such formal acts as the dissolution of parliament.

“After a general election, the appointment of a Prime Minister is also the prerogative of the Sovereign,” the royal website says. In this case, of course, there has been no general election; after Mr. Blair announced his resignation, Mr. Brown became leader of the ruling Labor Party in an uncontested vote of party members. Still, Mr. Brown fits the regal requirements for the job.

“In appointing a Prime Minister,” the royal website says, “the Sovereign is guided by constitutional conventions. The main requirement is to find someone who can command the confidence of the House of Commons.”

The ceremony and pageantry is largely invisible to the bulk of the people, and the tradition surrounding the weekly audiences with the Queen seems at odds with the ethos of a political era driven by the motors of spin and selective leaks.

The weekly audiences, “as with all communications between the Queen and her Government, remain strictly confidential,” the royal website says. “Having expressed her views, The Queen abides by the advice of her ministers.”

    ‘The Queen’ Got It Wrong: No Hands Are Kissed, NYT, 27.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/world/europe/27cnd-queen.html

Transcript

'Let the work of change begin'

Following is the first speech given by Gordon Brown
after accepting the role of prime minister

Wednesday June 27, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Press Association

I have just accepted the invitation of Her Majesty the Queen to form a government.

This will be a new government with new priorities. I have been granted a great opportunity to serve my country and at all times I will be strong in purpose, steadfast in will, resolute in action in the service of what matters to the British people - meeting the concerns and aspirations of our whole country.

I grew up in the town that I now represent in parliament. I went to the local school. I wouldn't be standing here without the opportunities that I received there and I want the best of chances for everyone. That is my mission - that if we can fulfil the potential and realise the talents of all our people then I am absolutely sure that Britain can be the great global success story of this century.

As I have travelled around the country and as I have listened and I have learnt from the British people, and as prime minister I will continue to listen and learn from the British people, I have heard the need for change.

Change in our NHS, change in our schools, change with affordable housing, change to build trust in government, change to extend and protect the British way of life. And this need for change cannot be met by the old politics.

So I will reach out beyond narrow party interest. I will build a government that uses all the talents. I will invite men and women of good will to contribute their energies in a new spirit of public service to make our nation what it can be.

And I am convinced that there is no weakness in Britain today that cannot be overcome by the strengths of the British people.

On this day I remember words that have stayed with me since my childhood and which matter a great deal to me today. My school motto - 'I will try my utmost'. This is my promise to all of the people of Britain and now the let the work of change begin.

Thank you.

    'Let the work of change begin', G, 27.6.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/gordonbrown/story/0,,2112857,00.html

3pm update

Brown declared prime minister

Wednesday June 27, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Deborah Summers

"Let the work of change begin," Gordon Brown declared today as he returned to Downing Street as the new prime minister of Great Britain.

A beaming an emotional premier pledged to use "all the talents" as he prepared to reshape the cabinet and government.

Speaking with his wife Sarah beside him Mr Brown told reporters: "I have just accepted the invitation of her majesty the Queen to form a government.

"This will be a new government with new priorities and I have been privileged to have been granted the great opportunity to serve my country."

He promised to be at all times "strong and steadfast" and to govern beyond narrow political interests.

Mr Brown said: "The need for change cannot be met by old politics," as he pledged to build a government that would use all the talents "in the spirit of public service that will make our nation what it can be".

The 56-year-old Scot, who took over as Labour chief on Sunday, spent almost an hour with the Queen before emerging from Buckingham Palace as prime minister, first lord of the Treasury and minister for the civil service.

At 1.47pm Mr Brown left the Treasury today for the short journey to the palace.

A government limousine took him the few hundred yards from his office of 10 years as chancellor, down the Mall, after Tony Blair tendered his resignation to the Queen.

Mr Blair and his wife, Cherie, left after 23 minutes at the palace, clearing the way for Mr Brown to fulfill his ambition to step through the famous front door of No 10.

As Mr and Mrs Brown were cheered out of the Treasury, the prime minister-in-waiting shook hands with dozens of staff lined up to wave him goodbye - among them was Ed Balls, one of his closest advisers - who he appointed economic secretary to the Treasury.

Outside Number 10 Mr Brown said: "I want the best of chances for everyone, that is my mission."

    Brown declared prime minister, G, 27.6.2007, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/gordonbrown/story/0,,2112808,00.html

Brown takes over as prime minister

Wed Jun 27, 2007
3:15PM BST
Reuters
By Sophie Walker

LONDON (Reuters) - Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair as prime minister on Wednesday and promised changes after a decade of Labour Party rule marred by a lack of trust in the government since the Iraq war.

After waiting 10 years for Blair to go, the long-serving finance minister faces a resurgent Conservative Party and needs to give Labour a fresh start if it is to regain popularity among voters and win a fourth consecutive term.

"This will be a new government with new priorities," Brown said in a statement to reporters outside the prime minister's residence at 10 Downing Street.

"I've heard the need for change ... and this need for change cannot be met by the old politics," he said. "And now let the work of change begin."

On an emotional day, Blair, who has towered overpolitics since a landslide election win in 1997, went to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation to the Queen.

Soon afterwards, a smiling Brown, accompanied by his wife Sarah, said goodbye to staff at the Treasury which he has run throughout Blair's premiership.

He then made the same short journey past central London landmarks to the palace where the Queen asked him to form a government. He emerged from the palace after 55 minutes to find his saloon car had been swapped for a shiny new Jaguar.

Brown's first task is to appoint a new ministerial team, with far-reaching changes to Blair's old cabinet.

Blair, the second longest serving prime minister in a century, led Labour to an unprecedented three consecutive election wins. But, for many, his legacy has been tarnished by his decision to back the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

"The first priority of Gordon Brown has to be recognising the disaster of the strategy in Iraq and making plans for the withdrawal of our forces," said Labour member of parliament Jeremy Corbyn, a critic of Blair and the Iraq war.

People will have to get used to a new style in their leader. In contrast to Blair's outgoing personality, Brown is a dour man not given to showing his emotions.

Blair continued to steal the spotlight with reports he was about to be named Middle East envoy for the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.

Before going to the palace, Blair answered questions in a packed parliament for the last time, displaying his mastery of debating skills in a session marked by humour and emotion.

SORRY ABOUT DANGERS

Blair began by offering condolences to families of British servicemen killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last week and paid tribute to the armed forces.

"I am truly sorry about the dangers that they face today in Iraq and Afghanistan. I know some may think that they face these dangers in vain. I don't and I never will," he said.

He finished with a final word on politics: "It is still the arena that sets the heart beating a little faster" before signing off simply with: "I wish everyone -- friend or foe -- well. And that is that. The end."

Blair appeared choked up and Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett was in tears as lawmakers gave Blair a long standing ovation.

Brown received a boost from an opinion poll that put Labour just one percentage point behind the Conservatives and from the defection to Labour of a Conservative parliamentarian who slammed David Cameron's leadership of the main opposition.

The Conservatives have surged ahead of Labour in polls since last October. Brown does not have to call another election until 2010.

Brown has vowed to revitalise Labour and learn from what he called the divisive Iraq war, although he still backs the decision to join the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and has said British troops will abide by their United Nations' obligations in Iraq.

(Additional reporting by Kate Kelland, Adrian Croft and Katherine Baldwin)

    Brown takes over as prime minister, R, 27.6.2007, http://uk.reuters.com/article/UKNews1/idUKL1760024920070627?&src=062707_1447_TOPSTORY_brown_ushers_in_new_political_era

Gordon Brown

to Take Over From Blair in Britain

June 27, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:17 a.m. ET
The New York Times

LONDON (AP) -- An emotional Tony Blair resigned as prime minister Wednesday after a decade in power, clearing the way for Treasury chief Gordon Brown to take command of the government.

Blair submitted his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II during a 25-minute closed-door meeting at Buckingham Palace. With his wife, Cherie, he waved to reporters and then traveled to his constituency in northern England, where he is expected to quit as a lawmaker to take up his post with the Quartet of Mideast peace mediators.

Brown, a 56-year-old Scot known for his often stern demeanor, beamed as he was applauded by Treasury staff before heading with his wife, Sarah, to the palace to be confirmed as prime minister.

Blair received a warm sendoff in the House of Commons, from his opponents as well as members of his own Labour party, after one final appearance at the weekly question time session.

''I wish everyone -- friend or foe -- well. And that is that. The end,'' he said.

Legislators rose to their feet and applauded as he left for his meeting with the queen. Some, including Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, wiped away tears.

Blair also used the session to say he was sorry for the perils faced by British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he gave no apology for his decisions to back the United States in taking military action.

Blair expressed condolences to the families of the fallen, this week including two in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.

''I am truly sorry about the dangers that they face today in Iraq and Afghanistan,'' Blair said.

''I know some may think that they face these dangers in vain; I don't and I never will. I believe they are fighting for the security of this country and the wider world against people who would destroy our way of life,'' he said.

''Whatever view people take of my decisions, I think there is only way view to take of them: they are the bravest and the best,'' Blair added.

David Cameron, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, saluted Blair's achievements and wished him well.

''He has considerable achievements to his credit, whether it is peace in Northern Ireland, whether it is work in the developing world, which I know will endure,'' Cameron said.

''I'm sure that life in the public eye has sometimes been tough on this family. So can I say on behalf of my party that we wish him and his family well, and we wish him every success in whatever he does in the future.''

Workers packed furniture and boxes into a van outside Blair's Downing Street home as he prepared to hand power to Brown.

The incoming leader, who for many lacks the charisma of his predecessor, must woo Britons by shaking off the taint of backing the hugely unpopular Iraq war. With promises of restoring trust in government, he is planning to sweep aside the Blair era after a decade waiting for the country's top job.

Brown will seek to head off a challenge from a revived opposition Conservative party. Polls already point to a ''Brown bounce,'' with one survey putting his Labour party ahead of its rivals for the first time since October.

Few expected the dour former finance chief to be greeted with public enthusiasm. In fact, Brown's ascension was widely seen as a political gift for the more youthful Conservative chief David Cameron.

But Blair's last full day in office brought an unexpected present -- the defection of a Conservative legislator to his Labour party. The move put Brown in bullish mood and he will now weigh calling a national election as early as next summer.

President Bush paid a final tribute to his ally and will later call Blair's successor with congratulations.

''Tony's had a great run and history will judge him kindly,'' Bush told Britain's The Sun tabloid in remarks published Wednesday. ''I've heard he's been called Bush's poodle. He's bigger than that.''

Bush is thought to have been instrumental in winning Blair his new role as envoy to the Quartet of Mideast peace mediators.

Irish leader Bertie Ahern said Blair he told him his new role would be ''tricky,'' but said he wanted to focus on peacemaking.

''He believes if you have hands-on, persistent engagement then you can have real progress,'' Ahern told Ireland's state broadcaster RTE.

Brown has waited 13 years for this moment. Most keenly watched will be his policy toward Iraq. British troop numbers there have rapidly fallen during 2007.

Blair has left his successor an option to call back more of the remaining 5,500 personnel by 2008 -- an opportunity likely to be grasped by a leader with a national election to call before June 2010.

''His hands, whilst not quite clean, are certainly not sullied,'' said Alasdair Murray the director of CentreForum, a liberal think-tank. Brown can ''portray it as Blair's war and differentiate himself.''

Brown may sanction a future inquiry on Iraq, similar to the U.S. Study Group, telling a recent rally that Britain needs to acknowledge mistakes made over the conflict.

In Europe, bridges have been built with German chancellor Angela Merkel and new French president Nicholas Sarkozy, but tensions are likely to emerge.

The succession of Brown ends a partnership at the pinnacle of British politics that began when he and Blair were elected to Parliament in 1983 -- sharing an office and a vision to transform their party's fortunes.

It has been widely reported -- but never confirmed -- that the two men agreed a pact over dinner in 1994: Brown agreeing not to run against Blair for the Labour leadership following the death of then party chief John Smith.

In return, Blair reportedly vowed to give Brown broad powers as Treasury chief and to step down after a reasonable time to give Brown a shot at the senior post.

Though Brown, who was unopposed in a contest to select Blair's successor, is moving jobs -- he won't be moving house.

He, his wife, Sarah, and two young sons already live in the private quarters at No. 10 Downing Street -- the prime minister's official residence -- having switched homes with Blair's larger family, who needed the roomier apartment next door in No. 11, Brown's official residence.

    Gordon Brown to Take Over From Blair in Britain, NYT, 27.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Britain-Brown.html?hp

The making of Gordon Brown

The next prime minister is always referred to as a 'son of the manse', but what was his Scottish upbringing really like? Andrew Pierce and Richard Alleyne hear the recollections of family and friends - many speaking for the first time - about the extraordinary talents and moral purpose of the young Gordon

Last Updated: 2:16am BST 09/06/2007
The Daily Telegraph

As Gordon Brown prepares to move next door to 10 Downing Street, pride of place in his new study will be given to a hardback collection of some of his late father's sermons in the Church of Scotland. The book was compiled by the Chancellor and his brothers, John and Andrew, to mark John Ebenezer Brown's 80th birthday in 1994, four years before he died.

The first sermon, poignantly, is called "Our Need of Vision" and was written with a father's heartfelt concern for a son who had nearly been blinded: "Blindness is surely one of life's sorest handicaps. Those who are deprived of sight miss much. They cannot gaze with wonder on hills and wayside flowers or crops growing in the fields... stars twinkling in the heavens... waves lapping on the shores."

Dr Brown delivered the sermon at St Brycedale Church in Kirkcaldy, where the family lived after Gordon, his second son, had gone blind in his left eye and had almost lost the sight of the other.

The darkness descended several months after Gordon was kicked in the head during an end of term rugby match. He was playing against the teachers at Kirkcaldy High School where he was the Dux, the leading scholar of his year, shortly before he went to Edinburgh University.

advertisementWhen he arrived at university in 1967, he was just 16, having been fast tracked in a pioneering scheme for the brightest pupils. He had succeeded at just about everything he had tried, whether in the classroom or on the sports pitch. But after two terms at university he was left lying in bed in a darkened hospital room, both eyes covered in patches, unable to move or read. The retina in his left eye was detached. After three failed operations, the sight was gone for good.

A few months later, while playing tennis, he noticed the same symptoms in his right eye. After undergoing experimental surgery at Edinburgh Infirmary the eye was saved. But the combined effect on the sports loving, academically brilliant 17 year old was profound. Gordon Brown feared, as he lay in total darkness for weeks at a time, that he was going blind.

"It made him more determined," his older brother John, now a public relations consultant in Glasgow, says. "He was in more of a hurry; he feared he might lose his sight altogether. It was a bleak time."

Gordon, John and Andrew were brought up in the manse in Kirkcaldy, where they enjoyed, by comparison to other families, a relatively privileged existence. Until Gordon was three, the family had lived in Glasgow, a city scarred by acute poverty and rising unemployment.

The experience in Glasgow defined the social conscience of Dr Brown and, in turn, had a decisive impact on his son's philosophy. "Our father never told us which way he voted," says John Brown, "but you knew, because of the poverty that he had seen, that he leaned towards Labour." Yet, curiously, Gordon was named after his mother Elizabeth's brother who was a member of the Conservative Party.

Gordon attended the nursery school, taught by a Miss Bogie, in two rooms of her flat, where he met Murray - now Lord - Elder, who is still a close friend today and who was chief of staff to John Smith, the late Labour leader.

When Gordon was four he enrolled at Kirkcaldy West, the local primary school, where the pupils learnt to write on slate with slate pencils. Gordon excelled at sums and was set increasingly difficult tasks by his teacher, Aileen Mason. Thomas the Tank Engine was his favourite book, according to his brother John.

At 10, he joined Kirkcaldy High, an ancient school with a new 1950s campus. It was selective in its intake and its 1,200 pupils were given a "hothouse" education.

His father was the school chaplain and his Presbyterian writ ran at home as well as school, so Gordon and his brothers had to sneak out of the manse to buy the Sunday newspapers. Their father did not approve of shopping on the Sabbath, even though he read the newspapers himself on Wednesday, when the guilt had faded.

A dutiful son, Gordon always practised his father's good Samaritan message with whoever came to the door seeking help. One day, his mother was surprised on her return from shopping to find her 10-year-old son deep in conversation at the kitchen table with a notorious house burglar. While her initial instinct was to worry about the family heirlooms, Gordon was not chastised. John Brown remembers: "Gordon found him on the doorstep and let him in, but he was not in trouble because our parents saw it as their duty to help."

Whatever mystery there may have been about how his parents voted, there was little doubt, even when he was still in his short trousers, which way the young Gordon was inclined. At lunchtimes at Kirkcaldy High, he and Murray Elder had debates on socialism with Miss Shaw, the librarian and a Tory.

When the time came to make money, he did so for a good cause. Gordon and his brothers opened a tuck shop in the garage of the manse to raise money for refugees. Naturally, Gordon looked after the money. At the age of 11, when most of his chums were reading comics, he and John founded The Gazette, whose proud boast was that it was Scotland's only newspaper sold in aid of African refugees. The 10-page paper, with a circulation of a few hundred, was produced on a duplicating machine, sold for three pence (later sixpence), and was inspired by one of their father's sermons. The Gazette became the vehicle for the burgeoning political philosophy of our longest serving Chancellor and provided the first glimpse of his now famous Presbyterian streak.

In April 1962, aged 11, he wrote an article about a church campaign in favour of television commercials against the twin demons of alcohol and tobacco. Gordon concluded his piece with a typically opinionated flourish: "Let us hope that this plan will be a success and that the sale of drink and cigarettes to the younger and older generation will fall when these [commercials] against drink and cigarettes are shown."

The newspaper's biggest scoop was an exclusive interview with US astronaut John Glenn in 1963. Gordon had written to Nasa with a series of questions about America's first space mission. Lt-Col Glenn, who had orbited the earth three times, answered 12-year-old Gordon's questions, to the amazement of his big brother. "He just had so much confidence," says John Brown.

In the same issue, the schoolboy pundit delivered a remarkably prescient view on the national political scene after a Scottish by-election in which the Conservatives, rocked by the Profumo crisis, lost their deposit. Referring to the Conservative prime minister Harold Macmillan, shortly before his hospital bed resignation, Gordon wrote: "Now, at the age of 69, many people rate him too old for this responsible job. The trend in the country now points to younger men like Harold Wilson and Edward Heath." Within a year, Wilson was prime minister and Heath was Conservative leader.

Gordon, hitting his stride, added: "We should, and must, have a strong and reliable government to promote our interests in Europe and the World. In Britain, too, we must have a less casual government that must take drastic measures in solving our unemployment, economic, transport and local government problems. Not long ago we were looked upon as a strong country; now our only hope of survival in an age dominated by nuclear power is to link up with our stronger western allies. So you can see our status today leaves much to be desired. I conclude, we can and indeed must have a more dynamic government."

His title was sports editor and, since he was a fanatical fan of Raith Rovers, then in the Scottish first division, the team dominated every back page. He sold programmes at half-time at the ground, Stark's Park, in return for a free ticket. These days, John Brown, aged four, has been spotted on his father Gordon's knee at Raith's home matches.

advertisementBy the time he was 12, he had already pushed Labour Party leaflets through the letter boxes of neighbours' homes and, while most of Gordon's schoolfriends cared little about the assassination of JFK, he was devastated. Kenn McLeod, 57, who followed him from Kirkcaldy High to Edinburgh, said: "Gordon saw him as the future and could not believe the future had been so brutally snuffed out. He was shocked and stunned. He kept saying, 'I cannot believe that this has happened'."

At 14, he passed nine O-levels and just after his 15th birthday Gordon took his Highers, the equivalent of A-levels, securing five grade As, including maths, English, and history; outstanding results that confirmed the young Brown's prodigious talent.

Gordon was part of the E-stream - the E stood for early - which fast tracked the brightest 16-year-olds to university. Mr McLeod, now an educational adviser, says that the E-stream and the brush with blindness were two of the most formative influences in his friend's life.

"We were constantly told the E-stream was an experiment and how we had to live up to expectations. Woe betide you if you didn't do well. Some people did not make it. Gordon noticed that those that dropped out felt very keenly that they had failed." He has been opposed to early selection ever since.

In many schools, the pupil who is consistently top of the form, or teacher's pet, would often be targeted by bullies. But Gordon won over the boys because he was a precocious talent on the sports field. He was a fearless member of the scrum - playing flanker - in the rugby team at 15, while the other boys were 17 and 18; he was a junior tennis champion and played the violin in the orchestra. He was also popular with the girls who thought he was handsome and going places."

So it was no surprise that, in January 1967, in one of his first public speeches, the 15-year-old proposed the toast to "the lassies" at the Burns Supper hosted by Kirkcaldy High School Literary and Debating Society. In the speech, written on his battered typewriter in red ink, he praised Burns for championing the role of women in society at a time when the "female was regarded fit only for the kitchen sink".

At university, where he took a first in history and wrote a PhD on the Labour socialist movement in Scotland, he was a distinctive figure who carried his papers in Marks and Spencer carrier bags.

Bob Cuddihy, a colleague in student politics and a local television presenter, remembers: "Everybody was concerned about his eye. They would form a protective circle around him in the pub. There was always a queue of lasses, including my girlfriend, who were admirers. 'He is so lovely, so good looking', they would say. They just went goggle-eyed. He had an energy, magnetism, and a terrific voice. I saw the power Gordon had to mesmerise people."

Drinking to excess and smoking dope was an occupational hazard for students in the late 1960s, but none of his contemporaries recalls Gordon Brown being drunk or taking drugs. However, neither do they recall the "dour son of the manse", as he has latterly been portrayed.

Simon Pia, a radio presenter in Scotland who was tutored by Brown, says: "I never understood when you heard about this dour character. At that time, he had a very easy charm. He was a big star and had a natural way with people. He would hold his tutorials in his flat over a couple of cans of beer. He held all sorts of parties. He had loads of friends from all different backgrounds. People were diving into bedrooms and smoking joints. He never indulged, but there was nothing disapproving about him either."

He recalls one incident: "I went back to his flat with two girlfriends at 3am on a Sunday and could hear the tapping of his typewriter. We drunkenly stumbled up the hall to the living room and put on records. Gordon joined us for a drink. A couple of hours later, dawn was breaking as I was leaving the flat and Gordon was tapping away again."

After editing The Student magazine, in which he famously exposed the university's investments in pro-apartheid South Africa, he became the second ever student rector; chairman of the university court and second in importance only to the chancellor, the Duke of Edinburgh. He was 21. His campaign was backed by an enthusiastic group of women known as the Brown Sugars, forerunners of the Blair Babes. Jonathan Wills, who was the first student rector of Edinburgh and now runs a seal and bird spotting business in Shetland, recalls his first introduction. "His brother John said, 'Here is my wee brother. He's a bit quiet but he is very clever'."

advertisementHe was also very messy, even by student standards. Mr Wills, who shared a flat with him for a while, said: "He was oblivious to his domestic surroundings. But it was at least better than his first flat. When I visited that a few years earlier, I vowed never to go back. There should have been a bio-hazard sign on it. It was a slum."

As rector, Gordon Brown fought and won a fierce running battle with the authorities for the right to chair the court, the university's governing body. In yet another sign of his future parsimony, he demanded a full list of expenses and entertainment allowances paid to members of the administration. He wrote in a memo: "In this time of economy I believe it is vital that the university's finances must not only be properly managed but be seen to be so."

When the principal objected to a rise in grants because of the amount students spent on alcohol, Brown wrote back asking, "whether you have an equivalent figure for members of staff". Mr Cuddihy says he was fearless and steadfast in his fight against the university leaders, who included senior high court judges: "At the time Tony Blair is playing air guitar with Ugly Rumours at Oxford, Gordon is having a court battle with the Edinburgh establishment and winning."

After university and a spell of teaching, he began work as a researcher at Scottish Television, where colleagues recall an impressive young man who did a mean impression of the fascist Oswald Mosley during a mock interview. But his heart was set on a career in politics. He first stood for an Edinburgh seat, with little hope of success, in the 1979 general election which swept Margaret Thatcher to power. He was then selected for the safe Labour seat of Dunfermline East in his family's backyard.

When he announced his resignation to fight the seat in the 1983 general election, Bill Brown, the managing director of Scottish TV, declared himself unimpressed. He asked: "Can you tell me why we employed that young man?"

Russell Galbraith, who was head of news and current affairs, replied: "Mark my words, one day we will be working for him."

    The making of Gordon Brown, DTel, 9.6.2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/09/nrgordon109.xml

Brown sets out plan

for tough new terror laws

· Judges to get more sentencing power
· PM-in-waiting takes on Labour left

Sunday June 3, 2007
The Observer
Nicholas Watt, political editor


Hardline anti-terror laws are to be proposed by Gordon Brown - including an extension of the 28-day limit on detention without charge - as the Chancellor sends a powerful signal that he will take a harder line on terrorism than Tony Blair.

In an intensification of Brown's plans for Number 10, which follows criticism that he has failed to flesh out his thoughts on terrorism, he will call this week for a series of measures that will infuriate his party's left wing.

They are contrasted with a strong attack on the government's 'macho posturing' on law and order by Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, who is standing for the Labour deputy leadership post. The Chancellor will indicate that he has little time for the Hain approach when he calls for:

· An extension of the 28-day limit on detention without charge. Blair had wanted to extend this to 90 days, but had to limit it to 28 after a Commons revolt.

· Making terrorism an aggravating factor in sentencing, giving judges greater powers to punish terrorism within the framework of the existing criminal law.

· Ending the ban on questioning by police after a terrorist suspect has been charged. This would be subject to judicial oversight to ensure that it is correctly and sparingly used.

· Moving towards allowing evidence from telephone-tapping to be admissible as evidence in court by holding a Privy Council review into whether the law should be changed.

· Increasing the security budget, which has already doubled to more than £2bn a year after 11 September 2001, in the forthcoming spending review when a single security budget will be unveiled.

Brown signalled the changes yesterday when he appeared at a Labour party hustings meeting in Glasgow. The Chancellor said: 'We must be vigilant for the benefit of security in this country. Anti-terror methods must be more sophisticated, with earlier intervention. That is why I support an increase in the length of detention to build up evidence across nations and I support post-charge questioning with an increase in police resources.'

The incoming Prime Minister wants to show there will be no let-up in the fight against terrorism and he is prepared to wrongfoot the Tories as they question some of the government's harsher measures. But Brown will balance his message by indicating that the government needs to do more to assure people that civil liberties are not being trampled on. He believes that the handling of detention without trial is a strong example.

The Chancellor believes it is possible to win support for increasing the 28-day limit if there is stronger judicial oversight of any decisions to extend an individual's detention on a week-by-week basis and an annual report to parliament on the use of the powers. But Brown believes there is a need to extend detention because of the volume of international evidence which accrues in such investigations, most of which can be difficult to obtain from computers.

Brown said: 'Because we believe in the civil liberties of the individual, we must also strengthen accountability to parliament and independent bodies overseeing the police, not subjecting people to arbitary treatment. The world has changed, so we need tougher security. We must recognise there is a group of people we must isolate who are determined to attack. Our security must be strengthened, but we must also strengthen the accountability of our institutions.'

Brown will demonstrate this by giving parliament a greater role in overseeing the intelligence services. He will place the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, which reports to the Prime Minister, on a similar basis as parliamentary select committees, which are acccountable to MPs.

Brown's decision to call for a Privy Council review on the use of telephone-tap evidence shows the Chancellor believes the traditional balancing act - whether it is right to produce in court irrefutable evidence of a terrorist conspiracy when that might expose other intelligence sources - has now come down in favour of presenting the evidence.

Brown sets out plan for tough new terror laws, O, 3.7.2007, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,2094352,00.html