Gordon Brown II

'I am a conviction politician just as Margreth Thatcher was'
- I liked these words from the prime Minister Gordon Brown on 4th September, 2007 during one of his usual press conferences.
I have become a great fan of this great man!! I like his words and actions as well!
By Mosonga

James Gordon Brown (born 20 February 1951) is the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
He took office on 27 June 2007, three days after becoming leader of the Labour Party.
Prior to this he served as the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Tony Blair's Government from 1997 to 2007, becoming the United Kingdom's longest serving Chancellor.
He also holds the positions of First Lord of the Treasury, the Minister for the Civil Service and has a PhD in history which he gained from the University of Edinburgh.

He has been a Member of Parliament, for Dunfermline East and then Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, since 1983.


Early life and career before parliament
Gordon Brown was born in Govan, in Glasgow, Scotland, although media have occasionally given his place of birth as Giffnock, Renfrewshire, where his parents were living at the time.

His father, John Ebenezer Brown, was a minister of the Church of Scotland. He was a strong influence on Brown and died in 1998, aged 84. His mother Elizabeth, known as Bunty, died in 2004 aged 86. Gordon was brought up with his brothers John and Andrew Brown in a manse in Kirkcaldy — the largest town in Fife, Scotland across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh. In common with many other notable Scots, he is therefore often referred to as a "son of the manse".
Brown was educated first at Kirkcaldy West Primary School where he was selected for an experimental fast stream education programme, which took him two years early to Kirkcaldy High School for an academic hothouse education taught in separate classes. At age 16 he wrote that he loathed and resented this "ludicrous" experiment on young lives.

He was accepted by the University of Edinburgh to study history at the age of only 16.
He suffered a retinal detachment after being kicked in the head during an end-of-term rugby union match at his old school. He was left blind in his left eye, despite treatment including several operations and lying in a darkened room for weeks at a time. He has since been fitted with an artificial eye.
Later at Edinburgh, while playing tennis, he noticed the same symptoms in his right eye. Brown underwent experimental surgery at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and his eye was saved.

Brown graduated from Edinburgh with First Class Honours M.A. in 1972, and stayed on to complete his PhD (which he gained in 1982), titled The Labour Party and Political Change in Scotland 1918-29.
According to biographer Tom Bower, Brown originally intended his thesis to cover the development of the Labour movement from the seventeenth century onwards, but evolved to more modestly describe "Labour's struggle to establish itself as the alternative to the Conservatives [in the early part of the 20th century]".

In 1972, while still a student, Brown was elected Rector of the University of Edinburgh, the convener of the University Court. Brown served as Rector until 1975, and he also edited The Red Paper on Scotland.
Brown served as a temporary lecturer at Edinburgh, but was denied a permanent post due to his political activism.
Instead he gained employment as a lecturer in Politics at Glasgow College of Technology from 1976 to 1980.
He then worked as a journalist at Scottish Television, later serving as current affairs editor until his election to parliament in 1983.

In the 1979 general election, Brown stood for the Edinburgh South constituency, but lost to the Conservative candidate, Michael Ancram.


Election to parliament and opposition
Brown was elected to Parliament on his second attempt as a Labour MP for Dunfermline East in 1983 general election and became opposition spokesman on Trade and Industry in 1985.
In 1986, he published a biography of the Independent Labour Party politician James Maxton, the subject of his PhD thesis.
Brown was Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 1987 to 1989 and then Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, before becoming Shadow Chancellor in 1992.

After the sudden death of Labour leader John Smith in May 1994, Brown was tipped as a potential party leader, but did not contest the leadership after Tony Blair became favourite. It has long been rumoured a deal was struck between Blair and Brown at the Granita restaurant in Islington, in which Blair promised to give Brown control of economic policy in return for Brown not standing against him in the leadership election. Whether this is true or not, the relationship between Blair and Brown has been central to the fortunes of "New Labour", and they have mostly remained united in public, despite reported serious private rifts.

As Shadow Chancellor, Brown worked to present himself as a fiscally competent Chancellor-in-waiting, to reassure business and the middle class that Labour could be trusted to run the economy without fuelling inflation, increasing unemployment, or overspending – legacies of the 1970s.
He publicly committed Labour to following the Conservatives' spending plans for the first two years after taking power.

Following a reorganisation of parliamentary constituencies in Scotland, Brown became MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath at the 2005 election.


The Prime Minister's website singles out three achievements in particular from Brown's decade as Chancellor:
presiding over "the longest ever period of growth", making the Bank of England independent and delivering an agreement on poverty and climate change at the G8 summit in 2005.


Acts as Chancellor
1. Bank of England independence On taking office as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Brown gave the Bank of England operational independence in monetary policy, and thus responsibility for setting interest rates.
2. Tax: In the 1997 election and subsequently, Brown pledged to not increase the basic or higher rates of income tax.
3. Over his Chancellorship, he reduced the starting rate from 20% to 10% in 1999 before abolishing the starting rate in 2007, and reduced the basic rate from 23% to 20%.
However, in all but his final budget, Brown increased the tax thresholds in line with inflation, rather than earnings, resulting in fiscal drag. Corporation tax fell under Brown, from a main rate of 33% to 28%, and from 24% to 19% for small businesses.

Spending Once the two-year period of following the Conservatives' spending plans was over, Brown's 2000 Spending Review outlined a major expansion of government spending, particularly on health and education. In his April 2002 budget, Brown raised national insurance to pay for health spending. Brown changed tax policy in other ways, such as the working tax credits.

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 only four Prime Ministers who attended a university other than Oxford or Cambridge, along with the Earl of Bute (Leiden), Lord John Russell (Edinburgh) and Neville Chamberlain (Mason Science College, later Birmingham). Many Prime Ministers were not university-educated at all, including the Duke of Wellington, Benjamin Disraeli, David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, James Callaghan and John Major.

Bid for Labour Leadership
In his resignation speech on 10 May 2007, Tony Blair stated he would stand down as Prime Minister on 27 June. After years of speculation, Gordon Brown formally announced on 11 May his bid for the Labour leadership. Brown launched his campaign website the same day as formally announcing his bid for leadership "Gordon Brown for Britain".
He formally became Leader of the Labour party at a special Party Conference held in Manchester on 24 June.


Brown as Prime Minister
Brown ceased to be Chancellor and, upon the approval of HM Queen Elizabeth II, became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 27 June 2007. Like all 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.

Married life and family
As a younger man, Brown's girlfriends included the journalist Sheena McDonald, Marion Calder and Princess Margarita, the eldest daughter of exiled King Michael of Romania. She has said about their relationship: "It was a very solid and romantic story. I never stopped loving him but one day it didn't seem right any more, it was politics, politics, politics, and I needed nurturing."

Brown married Sarah Macaulay in a private ceremony at his home in North Queensferry, Fife, on 3 August 2000 after a four-year courtship. She is a public relations executive and was, until 2001, Chief Executive of Hobsbawm Macaulay, the consultancy firm she owned with Julia Hobsbawm (daughter of Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm). They met when her company was advising the Labour-supporting New Statesman magazine in 1994 and the relationship blossomed alongside Labour's electoral success. On 28 December 2001, a daughter, Jennifer Jane, was born prematurely and died on 8 January 2002. Gordon Brown commented at the time that their recent experiences had changed him and his wife:
"I don't think we'll be the same again, but it has made us think of what's important. It has made us think that you've got to use your time properly. It's made us more determined. Things that we feel are right we have got to achieve, we have got to do that. Jennifer is an inspiration to us."
Their second child, John, was born on 17 October 2003. Their third child, a son, James Fraser, was born on 17 July 2006; it was reported on 29 November 2006 that he was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.

Sarah Brown, unlike Cherie Blair, rarely appears at public events with her husband and until recently even missed his Budget speeches. She intends to remain out of the limelight as much as possible but accepts that her life will change when she moves into 10 Downing Street. She has never given a magazine or television interview and even inundated with requests now, she is unlikely to do so.

Gordon Brown has never had a driving licence. His recreations include football, reading, tennis and writing.

Of his two brothers, John Brown is Head of Public Relations in the Glasgow City Council. His brother Andrew Brown is currently Head of Media for the French-owned utility company EDF Energy since 2004. He was previously director of media strategy at the world's largest public relations firm Weber Shandwick from June 2003 to 2004. Previously he was editor of the Channel 4 political programme Powerhouse from 1996 to 2003, and worked at the BBC from the late 1970s to early 1980s.


Honours
Brown received honorary degrees from the University of Edinburgh in 2003 and Newcastle University in 2007 (DCL). He received an Honorary Doctorate alongside Alan Greenspan from New York University in 2006.

source: wikipedia