Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown (right) stands with his wife Sarah (left) at the launch of his campaign for the leadership of the Labour Party in central London May 11, 2007. Brown launched his campaign on Friday after Prime Minister Tony Blair announced he would step down next month. - Reuters
LONDON, (Reuters):
Sure of becoming prime minister after long years of waiting, Gordon Brown smiles much more now.
He's got tailored suits and whiter teeth, and is making a huge effort to appear more personable. But Britain's finance minister still faces a battle to guide the increasingly unpopular Labour Party to a fourth successive election victory.
The son of a clergyman, Brown's serious style is very different from that of Prime Minister Tony Blair, the perennially upbeat lawyer who announced last Thursday he is stepping down after more than 10 years in office.
"Perhaps I will soon be able to talk about things other than financial figures," the 56-year-old Scot told Reuters. "I give news about the economy, and so the scope for great humour isn't really there. I can't just start cracking jokes about taxation."
Brown says he always wanted to be a footballer. But at 16, a sporting injury cost him an eye and put him in hospital for months. He was in danger of going completely blind.
"Every event that you face shapes you," he says. "I just had to stay determined and positive.
"The most important thing in one's life is to be determined when bad things happen to you, and not to let events beat you."
Brown threw himself into left-wing politics at Edinburgh University, his beliefs shaped by the poverty he saw growing up in Kirkcaldy, a town with a failing linoleum industry.
The Brown Sugars - miniskirted female fans - cheered him to his first election victory as university rector. Colleagues remember the student Brown as being intensely driven and he remains a single-minded workaholic.
WORKHORSE
Flying into Iraq for the first time in November, Brown continued studying his papers as the military helicopter lurched violently a few metres above the ground.
As the longest-serving Chancellor of the Exchequer in 200 years, Brown has had a greater hand in shaping domestic policy than any other incumbent in living memory.
He held the government's purse strings so tightly that one former top civil servant said he demonstrated "Stalinist ruthlessness" towards colleagues over spending plans.
His first act on entering office in 1997 is still regarded as Labour's masterstroke: handing control of interest rates to the Bank of England. He also kept Britain out of the euro.
The British economy has thrived and the International Monetary Fund repeatedly praises his skilful management.
But government borrowing has risen and the housing boom that has made huge numbers paper millionaires has increased inequality and created a trillion-pound debt mountain.
With decisions often made within a tightly knit coterie, many have criticised Brown's management style. Opponents say he lacks charm and often walks right past them without a word.
Certainly, Brown is more of a bruiser than Blair. He angered fellow G7 finance ministers in 2005 over his determination to get a deal on writing off Africa's debts and likes to portray himself as a staunch defender of British interests in Europe.
Fatherhood, however, has softened him. Brown shed a tear on television last year talking about the death of his daughter, Jennifer Jane, 10 days after her premature birth in 2001.
He and wife Sarah have had two sons since, John in 2003 and Fraser, who has been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, last year.
Brown's face lights up when he talks about them. "I need a red cement mixer. I'm going to be in trouble unless I get a red cement mixer," he suddenly interjected at dinner recently.
Glasgow-born Brown first entered parliament in 1983 to share an office with another promising newcomer - Tony Blair.
Rapid rise
The two rapidly rose through the ranks of an opposition party struggling to reinvent itself, with Brown considered the senior member of the partnership.
But when party boss John Smith died in 1994, Labour folklore has it that Brown agreed at a trendy London restaurant to give Blair a clear run for the leadership on the understanding he would take over halfway through a second term in government.
That point has long come and gone, creating the tension and intense rivalry that has been the defining feature of British politics for a decade.
Brown now finally looks certain to be prime minister. But with Labour well behind the Conservatives in opinion polls and an election expected in 2009, the question is for how long?
