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James Gordon Brown MP (born 20 February 1951) is the 52nd and current Prime
Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, First Lord of
the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, the current Member of Parliament for
Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath and the Leader of the Labour Party.
Brown was the Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007, making
him Britain's longest serving Chancellor since Nicholas Vansittart (1812–1823).
 Run up to
succeeding Blair
In October 2004 Tony Blair announced he would not lead the party into a fourth
general election, but would serve a full third term. Political controversy over the
relationship between Brown and Blair continued up to and beyond the 2005 election,
which Labour won with a reduced parliamentary majority and reduced vote share. The
two campaigned together but the British media remained – and remain – full of
reports on their mutual acrimony. Blair, under pressure from within his own party,
announced on 7 September 2006 that he would step down within a year. Brown was the
clear favourite to succeed Blair for several years with experts and the bookmakers;
he was the only candidate spoken of seriously in Westminster. Appearances and news
coverage leading up to the handover were interpreted as preparing the ground for
Brown to become Prime Minister, in part by creating the impression of a statesman
with a vision for leadership and global change.
Brown is the first prime minister from a Scottish constituency since the
Conservative/SUP Sir Alec Douglas-Home in 1964. He is also one of the few
university-educated Prime Ministers not to have attended Oxford or Cambridge, along
with the Earl of Bute (Leiden), Lord John Russell (Edinburgh) and Neville
Chamberlain (Birmingham). Several Prime Ministers were not university-educated
including Winston Churchill, James Callaghan and John Major.
On 9 September 2006 Charles Clarke in an interview in The Daily Telegraph said the
Chancellor had "psychological" issues that he must confront and accused him of
being a "control freak" and "totally uncollegiate". Brown was also "deluded", he
said, to think that Blair can and should anoint him as his successor now.
By the start of 2007, prospects of any significant current or former Cabinet-level
contender to Brown receded significantly, and Brown's odds with major bookmakers
became as short as 1/10 on. A number of those tipped as potential rivals ruled
themselves out – notably Education Secretary Alan Johnson, who declared he would
contest the deputy leadership, and Environment Secretary David Miliband, who
stressed his support for Brown to close down speculation of a possible challenge.
Despite his disavowals, attempts to draft Miliband to run continued, with the
launch of a website by former Ministers Alan Milburn and Charles Clarke,
obstensibly to debate policy, but widely viewed as an attempt to test the water.
However, this widely-covered initiative was also a seen as sign of weakness in that
the project appeared to have no credible champion to carry the banner in a
leadership contest. Only candidates from the left of the party, John McDonnell and
former Environment minister Michael Meacher declared their willingness to contest
the election; each needed to gain 44 nominations from Labour MPs required to be
successfully nominated. Either would have been rank outsiders in a contest. With
growing realisation that both could not be nominated and that both standing was
likely to lead to neither being nominated, they agreed that when Blair stepped down
they would compare nominations and the candidate with the lower number of
nominations would withdrew and urge his supporters to nominate the other.
From January 2007 the media reported that Brown had now "dropped any pretence of
not wanting, or expecting, to move into Number 10 in the next few months" –
although he and his family will likely use the more spacious 11 Downing Street.
This enabled Brown to signal the most significant priorities for his agenda as
Prime Minister - stressing education, international development, narrowing
inequalities (to pursue 'equality of opportunity and fairness of outcome'),
renewing Britishness, restoring trust in politics, and winning hearts and minds in
the war on terror as key priorities - speaking at a Fabian Society conference on
'The Next Decade' in January 2007.
On the eve of the 2007 budget, Brown's character was attacked by Lord Turnbull who
worked for Brown as Permanent Secretary at the Treasury from 1998 to 2002. Turnbull
accused Brown of running the Treasury with "Stalinist ruthlessness" and treating
Cabinet colleagues with "more or less complete contempt". This was especially
picked up on by the British media as the comments by Turnbull were made on the eve
of Brown's (expected to be last) budget report.
In his resignation speech on 10 May, Tony Blair made clear of his intention to
stand down as Prime Minister on 27 June. On the Wednesday following this
announcement, it became clear that no other candidate would gain enough nominations
to get on the ballot paper with Brown. He therefore formally became Leader of the
Labour party at a special Party Conference held in Manchester on 24 June.
Bid for
Labour Leadership
After months of speculation, Gordon Brown formally announced on 11 May 2007 his bid
for the Labour leadership and replaced Tony Blair as Prime Minister on 27 June
2007. On Channel 4 news on 16 May 2007 it was announced that Andrew Mackinlay had
nominated Brown giving him 308 nominations, sufficient to avoid a leadership
contest.
Since Blair's announcement of his resignation and Brown's bid for leadership, the
Labour Party has gained a bounce in the polls, gaining three points after months of
low polls trailing behind the opposition, the Conservative Party.
Brown launched his campaign website the same day as formally announcing his bid for
leadership "Gordon Brown for Britain".
Brown as Prime Minister
Main article: Premiership of Gordon Brown
Brown became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 27 June 2007. Like almost all
previous Prime Ministers, Brown concurrently serves as the First Lord of the
Treasury and the Minister for the Civil Service, is a member of the Cabinet of the
United Kingdom and, hence, also a Privy Counsellor. He is also Leader of the Labour
Party and Member of Parliament for the constituency of Kirkcaldy and
Cowdenbeath.
Source : Some of the information on this page came
from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU Documentation
License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Gordon
Brown - Manifesting Generator - Biography
