Gordon Brown is
currently one of the most unpopular politicians and least regarded former Prime
Ministers in Britain’s
history. The Economic Crisis hit the country on his watch, after he had been
effectively in charge of the economy for 11 years, so he inevitably carried the
can. Yet history may take a more generous view of his career, which for a
period was admirable for its imagination and prudence.
Although he had a charming and genial side, Brown became a
rather prickly colleague and he was not the centre of a loyal circle. Two other
substantial Scottish figures at least shared Brown’s origins in Labour Party
politics in Edinburgh.
Robin Cook soared like a bright
comet in the political sky before sadly burning out. Alistair Darling was Brown’s Chancellor and performed difficult
tasks with confident dignity.
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| Brown the Jovial |
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| Brown the Baleful |
Gordon Brown was born in Glasgow in 1951, his father being a
Presbyterian Church of Scotland minister, making Gordon the archetypical “son
of the manse”. The family moved to the Fife industrial town of Kirkcaldy, (once renowned for the manufacture
of linoleum). Bright and hardworking Gordon was fast-tracked at Kirkcaldy High School
and was accepted by Edinburgh
University at the early
age of 16. In the same year Brown lost the sight of his left eye after a rugby
accident.
He threw himself into left-wing student politics and became
a student leader graduating in history in 1975 but staying on for a doctorate
writing a thesis on the inflammatory and extremist “Red Clydeside” leader in
the 1930s James Maxton, whom Brown admired. So prominent at Edinburgh University
was Brown that he was elected Rector in 1972-5 at the age of 21. The older
Scottish Universities retain the largely ceremonial office of Rector, usually
held by someone connected to the university or otherwise celebrated – Brown was
preceded by actors Alistair Sim and James Robertson Justice, TV pundit Malcolm
Muggeridge and politician Jo Grimond and was succeeded by the likes of
politicians David Steel and Tam Dalyell and TV journalists Magnus Magnusson and
Muriel Gray - but unlike the others, young prodigy Brown’s eminence was yet to
come.
After a period as a lecturer and a TV journalist, and after
unsuccessfully contesting an Edinburgh seat in
1979, Brown entered Parliament as MP for Dunfermline
in 1983. At Westminster he shared a room with unknown but personable Tony
Blair, a middle class Englishman educated at the prominent public school Fettes
in Scotland, who went up to Oxford, became a lawyer and represented a
constituency in the North of England. Their careers were to be closely entwined,
as they worked together to create the modernised (and electable) New Labour.
This was a weary wilderness period for Labour but Brown
progressed to shadow Chief Treasury Secretary before joining the shadow cabinet
first as Trade Secretary and then as shadow Chancellor in 1992. Surprisingly
Brown largely kept out of the Scottish devolution debate declining to join the
favoured “Yes for Scotland” campaign yet not joining Robin Cook and others in
the “No” one. Robin Cook and Gordon Brown felt great mutual animosity: both
were ambitious and driven personalities. When Labour leader John Smith asked
Frank Dobson to try to reconcile them. Dobson reported back: “It cannot be
done: You were right. They hate each other”.
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| Brown and Blair: Close Colleagues and Deadly Rivals |
Brown worked hard on his economic brief, reading voraciously
and meeting leading economic academics. Once in office he conferred with the
then highly rated Alan Greenspan, head of the US Federal Reserve. Brown was
very well-informed about the US
and read its literature deeply. For years he took holidays at Cape
Cod and was generally an Atlanticist, fostering close US-UK links
and taking a cautious view of the European Union. He hobnobbed with Democratic
politicians from the Kennedy clan to Al Gore.
When Labour leader John Smith died suddenly in 1994 Blair
and Brown were said to have come to an understanding over a meal at the Granita restaurant in Islington. Supposedly
Brown gave Blair a clear run at the leadership provided he had an untrammelled
position at the Treasury. This much seems to have indeed been agreed: a second
part whereby Blair promised to step down in favour of Brown after a reasonable
time seems more uncertain. In retrospect, much bile and resentment could have
been avoided if both protagonists had openly stood for election, eschewing
backstairs deals, with a clear verdict delivered.
Brown did indeed become Chancellor of the Exchequer at the
Labour landslide in 1997. The UK economy had an unprecedented period of growth
from 1994 to 2008, partly attributable to the firm foundations laid by Tories
John Major and Ken Clarke but principally thanks to Brown’s initially prudent
stewardship during his record 10-yearspan at the Treasury from 1997 to 2007.
Brown introduced a series of reforms; the Bank of England won independence from
government interference: the City became regulated by the FSA: changes in the
way advance corporation tax was collected particularly taxed pension funds: His
early budgets were almost Thatcherite, but from 2001 the purse-strings were
loosened and vast sums were spent on the NHS and welfare provision: a complex
system of tax credits helped the lower paid. All this was the typical Labour
“tax and spend” policy and Brown added an idealistic drive to forgive the debt
of underdeveloped economies, mainly in Africa.
Mistakes were inevitably made. In hindsight regulation of
the City was too lax but it followed the US model. Government overspent and debt
steadily rose leaving the UK
badly exposed when the Economic Crisis struck. In a gesture of modernity, Brown
sold a large part of the UK’s
gold reserves from 1999 to 2002, disastrously timed as the price of gold has
increased 6-fold since then. Yet Brown mastered his office and, even if his
speeches on economics were uncharismatic and heavy with jargon, he was well
respected among international finance ministers.
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| Prime Minister Brown and his Chancellor Darling |
Brown’s personality seemed to undergo a change. He brooked
no opposition from colleagues and was described as “Stalinist”, morbidly
suspicious of competitors and plotting their overthrow. His office became
notorious for its “spin”, presenting data in a tendentious form. His own temper
was volcanic and he routinely abused civil servants and aides. He was generally
a poor manager of people and many commentators spoke of his unsuitability for
the Premiership. His face became puffy and he was out of condition. Long a
bachelor, he finally married dignified Sarah Macaulay in 2000. Sadly their
first child died soon after birth and of their two sons, the younger suffers
from cystic fibrosis.
Brown did render one signal service to his country. He kept
the UK
out of the Eurozone, despite Blair and many others being keen on entering. In
1998 he formulated 5 tests that the UK economy had to meet before entry
and they were never met. Whatever Brown’s motives, staying out of the dysfunctional
Eurozone with all its later crises was a substantial blessing.
After 2005 especially, Brown’s impatience with Blair became
obsessional as Blair hung on to office, but at last Blair stepped down in 2007
and Brown succeeded to the Premiership and leadership of the Labour Party
without any contested election. It was a poisoned chalice. The US sub-prime mortgage jitters hit the UK in 2007 with
a run on Northern Rock; soon enough RBS and Lloyds had to be rescued by the
taxpayer as the financial system went globally into meltdown with the 2008
collapse of Lehman Brothers. Brown acted decisively but company failures, sharp
limitations on credit and retail depression undermined voter confidence and
Brown’s brief premiership ended in electoral defeat in 2010.
Gordon Brown had many qualities and was a conscientious
public servant; as Prime Minister he was a good man in the wrong place with the
wrong temperament.
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One of Brown’s many enemies within the Labour Party
(although they were finally reconciled) was Robin Cook (1946-2005). Older than Brown, more experienced in
Labour local and national politics, a more penetrating debater and a much better
speaker, Cook had all the requisites of a successful politician, except good
looks.
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| Ill-favoured Robin Cook |
The gods had played s cruel trick on Cook. In this telegenic
age, Cook most resembled a startled garden gnome. I recall an Edinburgh taxi-driver, always proud of their
celebrity fares, confiding that he “had never seen an uglier man” Cook saw the sad
truth in this and declined to stand for the leadership when John Smith died in 1994
The son of a schoolmaster from Fraserburgh in the North
East, Cook first attended Aberdeen Grammar School before a family move to Edinburgh took him to the Royal High School.
An early ambition to be a Church of Scotland minister ended when he became a
lifelong atheist. He studied English Literature at Edinburgh University
and married Margaret Whitmore in 1969. He became a teacher and a local councillor
before entering Parliament as MP for Edinburgh Central (and later, Livingston) in 1974. He was 28.
Cook soon made his mark as a formidable debater of pronounced
left-wing views. He joined the Tribune Group, encouraged shambolic Michael
Foot’s leadership campaign and advocated unilateral nuclear disarmament, though
he was pro-European. Later he managed Neil Kinnock’s successful leadership
campaign. Cook rose through the ranks to become shadow Social Services
spokesman, Health Secretary and later held the shadow Trade portfolio. In this
guise he greatly impressed both sides of the House when he mauled Ian Lang, the
Tory Trade Secretary, over the Scott Report on the arms to Iraq scandal.
Given only two hours notice, Cook absorbed the essence of the 2,000 page Report
to general admiration.
A late convert to devolution, Cook worked in a Lib-Lab
committee on constitutional reform preparing the ground for the many changes
during the Blair ministry. In 1994 Cook became shadow Foreign Secretary,
.taking on this portfolio when Labour swept to power in 1997. He tempted fate
by announcing his belief in an “ethical” foreign policy; in the event he
oversaw the dubiously ethical interventions in Kosovo and in Sierra Leone: he upset Israel by publically condemning Jewish
settlements in the Left Bank while on an
official visit. Cook blotted his own ethical copybook by clumsily admitting to
an affair with his assistant Gaynor Regan and leaving his wife Margaret amid
ugly recriminations: he duly married Gaynor in 1998.
Blair demoted Cook from the Foreign Office to the Leadership
of the House of Commons in 2001, a happier hunting-ground for Cook. He
energetically reformed its working practices. In March 2003 Cook resigned from
the cabinet in protest against Britain’s
involvement in the invasion of Iraq.
His resignation speech was one of the most strikingly eloquent in Parliamentary
history and was given a unique standing ovation by both sides of the House. He
demolished the argument about weapons of mass destruction and regretted the
crucial lack of support from the Security Council of the UN. This speech was
the apogee of Robin Cook.
Cook was hill-walking in the Highlands
with Gaynor in 2005 when he suddenly died of a heart attack. He would certainly
have been recalled to senior office in due course but it was not to be. Cook
was a great parliamentarian and a fine Scotsman.
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My final politician in the Edinburgh orbit is Alistair Darling (1953- ),
whose political career is by no means over. Darling is the great nephew of the
Scots Unionist (Tory) grandee Sir William Darling, wartime Lord Provost of Edinburgh. His father was
a civil engineer and he was educated at the notable public school Loretto, at
Musselburgh, by Edinburgh.
In his youth, remarkable in one now thought of as a moderate, Darling was a
member of the Trotskyite International Marxist Group. He studied law at Aberdeen University, became a solicitor and then
read for the Scottish bar, admitted as an advocate in 1984. He was a leftist
member of Lothian Council, defying the rate-capping laws, before becoming MP
for Edinburgh Central (later Edinburgh South East) in 1987.
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| Alistair Darling: Marxist to Moderate |
His competent and calm style brought him quick promotion and
he joined the shadow cabinet in 1996. He was one of only three politicians (the
others being Gordon Brown and Jack Straw) to hold cabinet office throughout the
1997-2010 Labour administration. He was successively Treasury Chief Secretary,
Social Security, Work and Pensions, Transport,
Scotland and
Trade and Industry Secretary earning a reputation as “a safe pair of hands”.
In June 2007 Gordon Brown appointed Darling as Chancellor of
the Exchequer. In September the financial chickens came home to roost with the
first run on a UK bank since 1860, as depositors besieged Northern Rock.
Henceforward Darling was fighting a prolonged rearguard action, with leading
banks having to be nationalised, the Bank of England dragging its feet over the
provision of liquidity and City figures in denial about the mess they had
created. Darling presented 3 budgets mainly aimed at raising income tax, none
bringing much cheer. Darling and Brown acted decisively winning some plaudits.
It fell to Darling to inform Hank Paulson, US Treasury Secretary, in 2008 that the
FSA would not permit Barclays to buy parts of Lehman Brothers, undermining a
hoped-for US
rescue and lighting an explosive fuse under the swollen global financial
system. Unlike Brown, Darling did not get blamed for the subsequent debacle.
Out of office in 2010, Darling has retreated to the
back-benches. He is currently taking a leading position in the cross-party Better Together campaign aimed at
persuading Scotland
to vote against the insane siren calls for Scottish Independence at the fateful
Referendum on 18 September 2014.
Darling will earn the eternal thanks and respect of Scotsmen
of all parties if his campaign succeeds.
SMD
25.03.13
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald
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