On public display
The place maketh the man. To understand Gordon Brown you just need to go to Kirkcaldy - the town which he represents in Parliament and in which he was brought up as the "son of the manse".
I recently spent a couple of days there with Mr Brown talking to him about his upbringing, his home, his schooling and the the rugby accident which cost him the sight in one eye. (You can watch the film I made about this by clicking here).
As we moved from place to place in the town he was stopped by people who'd been to school with him or played rugby with him or who had known him since he sat in the pews listening to his father's sermons. What it made me realise is that whilst on the national political stage he's been a private man, sometimes awkwardly so, he has always been on public display in Kirkcaldy.
The son of the minister, the boy so bright that he went to secondary school at 10 and University at 16, the sportsman who lost the sight in one eye and has feared blindness ever since has always felt watched and assessed as to whether he lives up to his father's values.
Brown is nervous of this story merely confirming suggestions that he is dour, thrawn (watch the film for an explanation), over academic and religious. So much so that again and again when I asked him to tell stories he would insert a reminder that he'd played tennis, football and rugby before his accident.
There were moments though when he could not control and calculate his answers. At one point - not as it happens in the edited film - I asked him whether he would finally feel he'd lived up to what his father expected of him. I couldn't help noticing that his eyes visibly moistened. Tomorrow Gordon Brown will care what the voters, his fellow politicians and what the media think of his arrival at Number ten. I suspect though that he will also be pondering whether the Rev Dr John Brown would approve of what he was saying and planning to do.
I'm 
Comments
Sadly, I feel the film gives us too little of the man. I would have valued more from him - a longer film, basically. Would there be a chance of an extended edit for this page?
In particular, at the end you say that Brown thinks the country is ready for an older type of politics, and I suppose therefore, an older style of politician.
But can we hear him discuss that?
Nobody
Nick, there are bound to be many people who do not recognise the person you describe. However, I think it is fair to take a moment's reflection on Gordon's private side: it can put into context so many things. I hope though that in the future that you will judge the man by his actions and not be too influenced by the sentimental aspects you have lingering in the back of your mind. Gordon's time has come, to be sure, and I'm sure most people will wish him well. However there are some bodies that have had to be disposed of to get there, so we ought to be cautious about not getting too emotional about his private side.
Nick, if Gordon Brown had have had the guts to resign from Blair's cabinet before the illegal invasion of Iraq, he may have been able to prevent our involvement in one of the worst crimes of modern times i.e. the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. If Brown had resigned and Blair still gone ahead with the insane invasion, Brown would have become Prime Minister long ago.
If he is going to have any chance of persuading traditional Labour voters to return, Brown must clear out the Blair cabinet, none of whom have had the strength nor the inclination to stand up to Blair. He must not bring back people like Charles Clarke and Jack Straw whose right wing ideas and poor judgement have helped to decimate the party and bring discredit to our country.
Disgraceful policies such as ID cards and PFIs, which have put the country in hock to big business for decades to come, must be dropped and the excesses of banks, utilities and fuel companies, who have had a free for all in ripping us off, must be curbed.
Finally, he should tell people like Harriet Harman that it's not acceptable to say something to get elected and then deny it, does she think we're all stupid? ... it's called "treating the public with contempt" a bad habit she's obviously learned from Blair.
What happened to the hard nosed political journalist? Fancy writing this load of sycophantic mush!!
Nick, a really good peice of journalism there I deifinitely learnt something about Brown. It seems so far that we really don't know him. We are begininng to know a bit about what he stands for, but we don't yet have that familiarity that Blair seemed to have even from the start, and despite the fact that he has been chancellor for 10 years. The next few weeks are going to be really fascinating- I actually think he is really going to do something about the NHS pretty soon and I am really hoping that we get significantly less spin than with Blair.
Haven't yet watched your piece Nick, but I hope it's more balanced than the hatchet job masquerading as journalism that was last night's Panorama. It was a disgrace.
Hi, Nick!
Gordon Brown is a "son of the manse" - ie a Presbyterian. So he wont like FALSEHOODS, unlike some of his UK PM predecessors, & many of the current Heads of Government in the EU. So he will probably have difficulty accepting their lies, especially over the EU's proposed "Reform Treaty". If he spouts their falsehoods, he will be betraying his Presbyterian background. So his best approach is to break with the dishonesties of the EU's past, & have a REFERENDUM on the so-called "Reform Treaty", either IMMEDIATELY, or alternatively after the proposed treaty's final wording has been agreed at the end of this year. But if the Irish have their referendum now, so should the UK.
And then he should propose Westminster Parliamentary legislation that there should allways be UK referendums whenever there are major changes proposed regarding the UK's membership of the EU.
If he does this, I wish him well. If not, he will be no better than the UK's previous dishonest crop of PMs!
You wore matching ties too! What chums you too are Nick...
Some great stuff in the comments, both on Nick's topic and Gordon Brown the man. I think, this is really interesting. I really like the balance of information and tone of Nick's comment, and can strongly identify with Gordon's sense of trying to live up to his father. I lost mine when I was very young, have made a lot of mistakes, and have struggled with achievements and the maelstrom of inner demons.
Water and ice,
Their differences resolved,
Are friends again.
All's well that ends well, or something.
It is foolish to place one's trust in politicians.
For whatever reasons, some people become politicians and the most that we English folk can usually hope for is that they will leave us alone to get on with our lives.
Which is usually a vain hope.
"I'm from the Government and I'm here to help" usually raises the hollowest laugh of all.
I am unlikely to meet Gordon Brown so I must frame my view of this Scottish professional politician , plying his trade in England, on what I have seen and read.
The Saturday Telegraph's Ian Cowie (who has won three awards this year) has met Gordon Brown and he queried Borown on why PEP's and TESSA's were scrapped (to be replaced by the less popular ISA's).
Browns response lead Cowie to conclude that these savings plans were killed-off as a act of pure political malice.
I have also read Tom Bowers unauthorised biography of Gordon Brown.
It paints a picture of a deeply flawed individual - the 'Maxwell flat' saga was an complete disgrace.
Whatever, we English are stuck with this fellow from another country (just like his predecessor) for the present.
Frankly I'm not interested in where he came from, I'm interested in what he's done as Chancellor and what he plans to do as Prime Minister.
I do wish the 91Èȱ¬ would stop concentrating on the "fluff" and get down to the real substance.
NICK
If there is a private and occasionally awkward part of Gordon Brown, it may actually be no bad thing.
A fair few people MIGHT just preferred to be governed by a demonstrable human being, with equally-demonstrable feet of clay. It would certainly be different!
We might all grow to like it, too!
I can understand the 91Èȱ¬ doing puff pieces on the new Labour leader, soon to be prime-minister. But is it really appropriate for the political editor of the 91Èȱ¬ to be giving him this kind of uncritical hearing on the national news?
This piece could almost have come straight out of Labour HQ, watching it I was struck by how Robinson presented Brown in exactly the way Brown seems to want to be seen.
Robinsons summing up at the end of the piece was especially sycophantic; "(A) Son of of the Manse who believed in hard work and duty, not trifling with important matters. Gordon Brown believes the country is ready for those values again, the question is in the 21st century is he right?"
The tone of this is so friendly and unquestioning it sounds like it could have come straight out of the mouth of some Labour PR hack.
Are we really to believe that the important questions to be asking about a man who was heavily complicit in Blair's lies and war crimes is whether his devotion to "hard work and duty" is right for the 21st century? Is there some new 21st century technology that has rendered hard work obsolete so that our politicians should no longer do it? Or is this an irrelevant question that glosses over Brown's many faults by placing style before substance?
There's a place for puff pieces like this, even politicians should have an opportunity to present their side, but the place is not on the 6 o clock news, and certainly not fronted by the man supposed to be keeping Brown honest for the next few years. This portrayal was sycophantic in the extreme.
Gordon and Tony - men of faith. Hymns on their lips, lies in their teeth.
"the boy so bright that he went to secondary school at 10.."
This was a sign of the times. I went to grammar school at 10; so did my husband and many friends. Unlike GB, we didn't go to university at 16. Like GB, I would agree that many "fast-forwarded" in this way "fell by the wayside" and never reached university at all, wasting their talents.
It is important to remember that being extremely clever for one's age is not a guarantee of extreme cleverness in adulthood.
At 6 years old, I was VERY bright. At 60 .....
Members of the Labour governing team have been telling us till they are blue in the face that it is a Team that is giving government its current complexion, not leaders. Nick and his Journalistic colleagues won't have it, and won't let US have it! Perhaps unwittingly, the only format befitting this correspondent's perspectives is a dictatorship! Why? because the premiss is that the Leader is all-important. The media-obsession is with Personalities, High Profiles and Icons. You will finish up dragging sound-bytes and spin out of Gordon Brown when it is entirely against his nature, his style or method, and has not been the Labour Party's modus operandi in all of the last 10 years! Does it REALLY take a change of Leadership Style to call off the Media circus and restore Politics to the Politicians?
Mr Robinson,
Questions:
1. Do you really thinks that the 91Èȱ¬'s political editor is an appropriate presenter for such a soft piece?
2. Will you be making an equivalent piece about the backgrounds of the many ex-pupils of major British public schools (Eton, for example) who were imbued with a sense of duty and public service in their time there?
MTK.
I don't believe you, when you say Gordon Brown went to Secondary school at the age of ten. Only private school education could account for this, and that is not your implication.
That interview told us much more about Nick Robinson than Gordon Brown.