Gordon Brown: a political survivor hoping to pull off an unlikely comeback

Gordon Brown: a survivor fighting to avoid defeat

LONDON — Gordon Brown has never made politics look easy, and Britain’s hard-fought election campaign has been a grueling trial for the incumbent prime minister.

The latest episode saw Brown standing Sunday in the driving rain, being heckled by a man who encouraged him to fall under a car. In a campaign in which the smallest details are seized on as symbolic, it was a bad sign.

The sober Scot’s attempt to hang on to his job — and keep his Labour Party in power after 13 years — has been battered by gaffes and missteps, and the polls suggest Labour will finish second, or even a humiliating third, when Britons vote Thursday.

But he is battling to the last to save his premiership, imploring voters to focus on his formidable substance, not his forbidding style.

“I think at the end of the day people will vote for the substance,” Brown told The Associated Press during a campaign visit to supermarket workers in west London.

“There’s obviously lots of interest in various things that go on in the campaign but they come back to the big issues: who’s going to be best for the economy, who’s going to be best our for public services, and I think these are the two questions that people ask me most.”

Brown’s refusal to give up in the face of discouraging polls and derisive pundits is resulting in a frenetic final few days of polling. On Sunday, he made no less than 10 campaign stops across a rain-splattered London, from a housing-estate police station to a gospel church, a supermarket and a pub.

At the first stop, the police station, there was a warm welcome from Labour supporters, stilted small talk about the bad weather — and a local Conservative councilor, John Hills, shouting “You’re rubbish … There’s a car, fall under it.”

Brown ignored the remarks, and the Conservative Party said Hills’ comments were made “in the heat of an election event.”

Some voters were more sympathetic.

“He looks more attractive in person than on the TV,” said Maude Estwicke, 62, a Londoner whose door Brown knocked on during the day.

Brown’s career reads like a classic tragedy, a man whose undoubted intellect and skill were undermined by a lack of charisma and a run of bad luck.

A precocious political star, he was Britain’s leader-in-waiting for a decade, but took power just as the Labour Party’s — and the country’s — fortunes were taking a turn for the worse.

As Treasury chief for 10 years under Tony Blair, Brown steered Britain through a period of unprecedented economic growth. But he was known to covet the top job, which had been his goal since he was a young Labour activist in Scotland.

He finally got it when Blair stepped down in June 2007 — a time when the government’s popularity had been sapped by unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and just as the worst economic crisis in more than half a century was taking hold.

Brown won praise for his handling of the financial crisis, and throughout the campaign he has hammered home the message that the economic recovery is not safe with the other parties.

But in the televised debates, the stern Brown was outshone by the charismatic Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, the surprise star of this campaign. During the weeks of grueling campaigning, 59-year-old Brown has often looked tired, especially when compared to Conservative leader David Cameron and Clegg, both 43.

Then on Wednesday, Brown was caught on microphone calling a voter he had just met a “bigoted woman.” Despite a groveling apology — “I am a penitent sinner,” he said — the damage had been done, and the woman, Gillian Duffy, told the Mail on Sunday newspaper she wasn’t impressed.

“Sorry is a very easy word, isn’t it,” she was quoted as saying.

There was more bad news in the papers when the left-leaning Observer announced it was backing Clegg, the latest in a slew of media endorsements which have gone against the prime minister.

On Sunday, Brown accused journalists of being “only interested in the froth.”

“Get interested in the policies … You have got to know that this election is about policy,” he said.

Brown, who now describes himself as the underdog, is battling on. His supporters say it’s a sign of his endurance.

The son of a Church of Scotland minister, Brown comes from a relatively humble background compared to privileged Tory chief Cameron and Clegg, who is the privately educated son of a financier. He lost the sight in one eye in a rugby accident when he was a teenager, and underwent surgery to save partial vision in the other.

Brown’s supporters say his background has given him personal courage and tenacity, alongside a strong moral core.

But Brown’s religious background failed him at a south London church on Sunday, when he quoted a passage he said was from the book of Micah “in the Gospel.”

Brown said the passage “talks about justice rolling down like water and righteousness like the mighty stream.”

“But before these words in that verse it says: ‘Have done with people who are just presenting images. Have done with people who are just talking or singing songs that don’t mean anything,’” Brown said, in what may have been an allusion to his rivals. “Have done with the irrelevancies. Get to the center point.”

In fact, the book of Micah is from the Old Testament, not the Gospel, and the verses which Brown paraphrased come from book of Amos, not Micah.

Nevertheless, Brown received a warm welcome from the mostly black congregation, entering to a crowd clapping and singing “Hallelujah.” The message was not directed at him, but was welcome nonetheless.

The preacher’s son was in his element addressing worshippers, quoting freely from scripture in support of his key election promise, a fairer society.

“We will not walk by on the other side,” Brown said in another biblical echo. “That is what we believe.”

When this election is over, historians will have to decide that Brown is a politician whose strengths were overshadowed by his flaws.

Tom Bower, author of a critical biography of Brown, has called him “a brilliant tactician … ruthless, married to politics, very intelligent.”

And yet, Bower said, his time in office “will be remembered for the extraordinary lost opportunity and the bizarre disappointment.

“He finally got the job he’d always wanted, and nothing happened.”