Gordon Brown's 13-year itch to lord it over 10 Downing Street
seems to be over. The British Chancellor of Exchequer still has a
seven-week wait, though, because Tony Blair will hand over his
resignation and seals of office to Queen Elizabeth only on June 27.
Brown failed to challenge John Smith for the Labor Party leadership
in 1992. But more importantly (and famously), he didn't challenge
Blair either when Smith suddenly died in 1994 "because he had
struck a deal with him not to run against one another".
A year later Blair was sworn in as Britain's youngest prime
minister in nearly 200 years, a telegenic communicator from the
modernist right wing of the Labor Party. But the 54-year-old prime
minister's popularity was damaged by Britain's involvement in the
war in Iraq.
Blair's decade in power will be remembered for his media-savvy
transformation of British politics. But above all, it will be known
for the Iraq war. Blair, a guitarist who famously fronted a student
rock band called Ugly Rumors at Oxford University, has become one
of the world's most controversial leaders for backing the US-led
invasion of Iraq in 2003. Britain's involvement is still a divisive
issue, and his party has slumped in the polls.
Blair has admitted that resigning as prime minister could help
reverse his party's and his successor's fortunes. "But I also
believe... that the essential new Labor position, which is to get
over some of the old divisions of left and right in politics...
will hold," he said before the May 2 anniversary of his 1997
landslide election victory. The longest-serving Labor prime
minister and the only one to have led the party to three
consecutive election victories will also be remembered for helping
to bring peace to Northern Ireland.
And he deserves credit for keeping Britain's economy more than
alive and kicking despite all the odds.
Blair was born in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh on May 6,
1953, and spent most of his childhood in the northern English city
of Durham. He studied law at Oxford University to become a
barrister, and joined the Labor Party when he was in his 20s. He
was elected to parliament from the northern English town of
Sedgefield in 1983 when the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher
were pushing British politics to the right. He rose rapidly through
the Labor ranks as the party sought to bounce back from a series of
disastrous election defeats and bitter internecine conflict.
In his initial years as prime minister, he was the darling of
the people and the media. His ability to connect with the
electorate and work his media magic was sealed in 1997 after the
death of Princess Diana, when he called her "the people's
princess".
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Blair declared that he
stood "shoulder to shoulder" with the US, and hitched his future to
its new president, George W. Bush. The leaders formed a bond and at
one meeting announced they even shared the same brand of
toothpaste. But the closer he got to Bush, the lower his popularity
ratings fell. And the pressure to resign mounted on him with each
passing day.
Still on the election campaign two years ago, Brown was even
reported to have asked him when he would step down. Blair is
supposed to have bought an ice cream to cool him down.
?
Brown got what he had been "waiting for all these years". He is
reported to have already garnered pledges from 271 of the 355 Labor
MPs, with the figure increasing by the hour. The decision by Home
Secretary John Reid to leave the government without throwing his
hat in the ring has bolstered Brown's support.
But the Brown camp still fears that a couple of other MPs could
scrape the 44 votes they need to get onto the ballot paper, if, as
expected, one of them stands aside to maximize support for a single
left-wing candidate. About 84 Labor MPs are thought to be
"undecided" about who they would back, although a number of them
are committed "Blairites" who will have no intention of voting for
either of them.
Brown will try to shake off his "control freakery" image and has
already signaled his belief that parliament should have a say on
big decisions such as going to war. He will also call for more
powers to be devolved away from Whitehall and greater consultation,
with the executive being held to account not just by parliament but
also by the country. Examples of decentralization could include
setting up an independent board for national healthcare that would
give it constitutional freedom and continuity of policy.
He hopes to avoid a summer of discontent by doing the rounds of
spring union conferences. Unions want to see some rolling back on
privatization and public-private partnerships, which they say are
fragmenting the nation's public services.
On foreign policy, the chancellor is anxious to draw a line
under the Iraq conflict - perhaps the biggest cause of the
government's unpopularity - and has pledged to reduce troop numbers
when possible.
He is also expected to try to shed the UK's image as George
Bush's poodle by forging a different relationship with the US. But
he is unlikely to radically change the security policy. He
supported government plans - defeated in parliament - to detain
terrorism suspects for more than 28 days without charge.
On Europe, Brown is expected to join France's Nicolas Sarkozy
and Germany's Angela Merkel to advocate structural reforms in the
EU.
Blair's resignation has triggered a meeting of the Labor Party's
national executive committee, which will meet on Sunday to finalize
the timetable and arrangements for the nominations for the
leadership and deputy leadership contests and appoint an election
committee to oversee the process.
Brown, meanwhile, will steam ahead with his campaign tomorrow,
by unveiling his policy agenda as prospective party leader on a
theme of "continuity and change".
(China Daily via agencies May 11, 2007)
