Gordon Brown: Sarah's my hero... she tackles every challenge with dignity

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12 April 2012
EXCLUSIVE

Gordon Brown stops at a tiny red-and-white toy piano in the hall of his private flat in Downing Street and playfully hits a couple of notes.

"I did learn to play once but have forgotten it all," he says, striding past children's bicycles, gum boots and other toys into the upstairs drawing room. Framed signed photographs of his two boys alongside Nelson Mandela and the Pope adorn side tables. Sarah glides in with two glasses of water and watches protectively for a few moments as he explains why he should be elected prime minister.

In his most intimate interview to date, he talks of his love for Sarah, the never-ending pain at the death of his daughter Jennifer, the real reason his handwriting is so bad and how he learnt his sense of duty and economic thrift from his parents.

He says he is confident of victory in the general election, but cannot bring himself even to mention his opponent David Cameron by name. But he does reveal that he is bringing back Tony Blair to his election campaign. He also promises that other senior New Labour figures no longer in government will be on the Brown trail.

The Prime Minister hit back after being taunted by the Tory leader in Parliament this week for leaving troops on the battlefield without proper kit and equipment.

"It is not correct. We did everything in our power to fund our forces. I am saddened by the level of debate in this country."

Does he mean Cameron in particular? "I am not going to blame any individual. No point in that."

So as the country prepares to square up to the great Cameron or Brown choice (with Clegg the alternative), what does Brown think of Cameron as a person?

"I don't know."

You must know. You stand within a yard of each other almost every week in the Commons.

"I don't, I don't," says Brown.

Will he be a formidable opponent? "I am not getting into personal things like that. The people will judge who is best for the country. The Conservative party is a formidable opponent in terms of being very well resourced in terms of money."

He adds with a mischievous chuckle: "Although they may have invested unwisely in their poster campaign.

"But I am not going to get into personality politics. It is not what I have done in my life."

Brown is happier with policies rather than personalities and with some justification presents himself as the leader who led a global coalition to avoid financial meltdown.

"My job was to find a way through it and protect people from the worst impact of a potential recession while at the same time renewing the financial system so that it could help people."

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are more palatable subjects than talking of Cameron.

"The reason I virtually volunteered to go to the Chilcot inquiry earlier is because I do not want there to be any misunderstandings on either our commitment on defence or our decision as a Cabinet — and it was a collective Cabinet decision — to go to war," he says.

But weren't you accused of being the Macavity of the Iraq war, disappearing from view at every crucial stage?

"That is not true. If you look at the history, the weekend before the war with the vote in the House of Commons, I was on television the whole time"

But that is not the perception. "That is the correct picture. These decisions are made at prime ministerial level more so than at Chancellor of the Exchequer level. My involvement was not on the military side so to speak, more on the financial side as you would expect from the job I was in."

Brown thinks his true grit will be why the country will elect him.

"I have learned more about having to deal with adversity and my sparring partner is not the Conservatives but adversity. I have a resilience that means I can deal with the big issues and I have proven that."

Two serious topics constantly recur in his conversation: death and duty. Lacerating the excesses of bankers, he quotes his father who always expected people to use their talent.

"You should be rewarded for your hard work, enterprise and doing your duty and not be rewarded for reckless risk-taking. He also said you can leave a good or a bad mark and it is up to you. It is the basic values of an ordinary family business where I learnt my core values."

The war in Afghanistan has meant almost weekly news of British soldiers killed or wounded. One war fatality that shook Brown was that of Guardsman Jamie Janes in Afghanistan, which led to accusations that the Prime Minister had been insensitive over his letter of condolence to the soldier's mother with their surname appearing to be misspelt. This was possibly due to his near-illegible handwriting.

Brown was caught in a tabloid furore as his subsequent telephone conversation with the mother was taped and published by The Sun. What had been a decent thing to do led to him being attacked.

Brown cheerfully admits his handwriting is difficult to read but says this has nothing to do with his poor eyesight but is due to the way he was taught to write at school. Teachers offered traditional and italic tuition and he took both and this led to his writing being very difficult to decipher. He allowed his handwriting to be influenced by both and to gain from neither.

"I admit it is not easy to read, but Sarah read the letters I wrote and said there are no spelling mistakes here because that is how you write. But I do apologise. I never criticised Mrs Janes or said she was unfair to me.

"I feel Afghanistan is a just war, but if someone is grieving in our country as a result of that, I feel I have a duty to talk to them.

"When I found out Mrs Janes was upset about the letter I immediately tried to phone and I did not know that the phone call was being taped. I wanted her to know that every time a soldier dies in Afghanistan I have to think: are we doing the right thing? Is this right that we are on this enterprise?"

Following the death of his infant daughter, Brown has altered the way he has reacted to the bereavement of others.

"I know about death. There is a finality about death and if someone loses someone that is close to them you are never the same again. You cannot be the same person as you were before, particularly if that someone is young or, in our case, a child.

"You are always thinking of what could have been. Every year you are thinking of that daughter who was about to go to school or about to write for the first time, about to read, go to their first film or party, be a teenager.

"It changes your life forever. It makes you feel the value of time. We had our daughter only for 10 days and I remember every single moment of that probably more vividly than anything else." Brown has managed to find positive things from Jennifer's short life. "Because we had the joy of her as well as the loss, I think it hurts to talk about it sometimes. But Sarah and I have set up this charity that is to do with some of the medical problems that were raised by what happened to Jennifer.

"There has got to be some purpose in tragedy. I remember how difficult it was to come to terms with what I had never wanted to come to terms with: that she was not going to live. It took a few days for us to recognise that there was nothing that could be done."

Did prayer help? "Yes but friends, Sarah and our family also."

His wife is the anchor of his life, he says, echoing her party conference adulation towards him.

"She is my hero. No doubt about it — her beauty and her quiet dignified way of dealing with every challenge that we face."

When asked how lucky he is to be so loved, he replies with reserve.

"I think we do quite well together. She changed my life. And I now have two wonderful boys who have been through a lot together. If you do things together you can do things well. We are a very, very happy family and in this job it is very important."

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