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To secure a fourth term for Labour — and a first elected term for himself — Brown must quickly woo back disenchanted voters by confronting a range of painful problems. Public discontent centers on Britain's role in Iraq and the government's perceived subservience to the U.S., as well as questions of probity raised by Labour's spin and an investigation into party fund raising. Brown won't officially start as Prime Minister until after the conclusion of a seven-week leadership contest. It should be a formality, given the absence of credible opponents, but champagne corks aren't yet popping to welcome his ascent to power. Everyone, fan and foe alike, acknowledges that Brown is a political giant, but still they wonder — is he big enough, or amiable enough, for his new job?
It all boils down to a question of character, and that character is complex. As partygoers at Labour's Manchester congress discovered, Brown doesn't do small talk. In interviews, too, he repudiates seductive sound bites in favor of considered responses that can leave eyelids drooping as the 10th subclause gives way to an 11th. Presentation is important, he concedes in an interview with Time, but he wishfully senses a new appetite for substance: "The issues and the challenges are greater and more global than they were 10 years ago. I think the electorate expects people in public life to address these with a degree of seriousness."
The lips that uttered that sentence are capable of smiling, rather sweetly, and often part to emit bursts of spontaneous laughter. He tells jokes, though no one can quite remember the setups or the punch lines. He has two young sons (his daughter died 10 days after her birth in 2002) and a sparky wife who seems adept at summoning his lighter side. Still, it's difficult to imagine him indulging in frivolous pursuits. It comes as no surprise that he's the son of a Scottish preacher, a background that imparted what he calls "a sense of a moral compass," as well as a frugal lifestyle and an urge to evangelize that has long since been sublimated into a focus on such causes as tackling poverty and preventable disease in Africa.
It's harder to perceive in the burly man a talented young athlete who dreamed of a sporting career until a rugby injury at 16 nearly cost him his eyesight. Brown told Time that the resulting series of operations prevented him from exploring the world during his student years. His biographers — there have already been four — suggest he explored his interior universe instead. He emerged a reflective character, with impaired vision that may well exacerbate his poor recall for faces.
Excuses or no, over the years he's bruised egos with his lack of social skills and his robust negotiating technique. Chancellors always confront Cabinet colleagues over budgets. Brown seems to have ruffled more feathers than most, though Baroness Morris says her frustration was tempered with gratitude: "You're thinking, 'Thank God he runs the economy so well so we have this money to spend.'" Others have proved less forgiving. Former Cabinet colleague Charles Clarke branded Brown a "control freak," while Lord Turnbull, a top civil servant, remarked of his management style at the Treasury: "You cannot help but admire the sheer Stalinist ruthlessness of it all." Within eight months of Blair's first victory, a source from within 10 Downing Street famously skewered Brown by diagnosing him as "psychologically flawed."
Here's what his friends say. "He's a driven force," according to Geoffrey Robinson, M.P. and former Paymaster General. "You get a feeling there's a bit of his brain that's always on the job," says Morris. The worry among Labour backbenchers, hunched over pints and pork scratchings in the bars of Westminster, are those questionable soft skills. Brown must learn to be, well, less like himself, they say. And the role model they've chosen for him? Blair.
It's the leitmotif of Brown's political life. In 1994 he stepped aside to let Blair lead the party, persuaded that his media-savvy friend would appeal more widely to voters. Brown's supporters claim the Prime Minister reneged on a deal to stand aside after two terms to give Brown a turn at the wheel. Blair showed no inclination to budge until restive M.P.s, worried that his post-Iraq unpopularity was damaging the party, finally pressured him into announcing last September that he would go within a year.