It’s been nine months since Gordon and Sarah Brown linked hands with their children and walked out of Downing Street for the last time. With the publication of her diary, Behind the Black Door, the former ‘WPM’ tells Jack McKeown about the good times and the bad.
Throughout the book written in diary format from her schedule and notes she refers to herself as the ‘WPM’, or Wife of the Prime Minister.
“That was the abbreviation everyone used behind the scenes I saw it on memos and so on. There is no title for the Prime Minister’s wife, so I just started using those initials as well.”
A combination of Cherie Blair’s strong character, her occasional disastrous misjudgments and 21st-century scrutiny meant there were times when she received more media attention than her husband. When asked if she feels the character of her predecessor added pressure to her own role, Sarah assiduously avoids criticising the former WPM.
“We’re under a different level of scrutiny,” she says. “A lot of it is to do with the 24-hour media. Mrs Blair was under the spotlight, so was Norma Major. The role has changed with the times, and all of us in recent years have been more closely scrutinised than used to be the case. I think anybody that takes on the role has to be aware of this.”
Sarah has enjoyed much more favourable press coverage than her predecessor, but the level of scrutiny still took some getting used to.
“I had a lot of experience from when Gordon was Chancellor and we were at Number 11. I knew how the building works and I knew the people, but I still found Number 10 very different. One of the differences is the level of scrutiny you’re under. Fortunately, I didn’t have to work with security Gordon didn’t have that option but it changes what you can do.
“If you’re shopping you can feel people looking at you, even if they don’t come up and speak to you. I kept my Oyster card so I could use trains and buses. Strangely, I almost never got recognised if I was on a bus. I think it’s because people don’t expect to see you there.”
Sarah first got to know Gordon, who is now 60, when they shared a flight to Scotland for the Scottish Labour Party Conference in 1994. They married in 2000 in North Queensferry. They have two children, John (7) and Fraser (4), who go to primary school in Fife. Their daughter Jennifer was born prematurely, shortly after Christmas 2001 and tragically died just 10 days later.
Behind the Black Door has the touching dedication: “For Gordon, John and Fraser, and remembering Jennifer, always.” Few readers will be able to maintain dry eyes when reading the passages on the loss of their first child.
“You come out of something that’s the worst thing imaginable and it’s still part of you every day,” Sarah says. “You start looking for ways you can help prevent other people going through what you’ve been through. If you can do that, it can help you through it a little.”
Such a heart-wrenching loss has informed many of the actions Sarah has taken since, especially the type and number of charities she’s lent her support to. She has a role spearheading a leadership group on maternal and infant mortality that supports the United Nations’ Every Woman Every Child programme.
“It feeds directly into the Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki Moon’s global health plan, and forms part of the Millennium Development Goals on reducing maternal mortality by three quarters by 2015.”
She’s also patron of domestic violence charity Women’s Aid and of the network of Maggie’s Cancer Care Centres. In 2002, she founded the children’s charity PiggyBankKids which administers the Jennifer Brown Research Fund, set up in memory of their lost daughter.
Continued…
“It (being WPM) does change your profile and I hope I tried to use that in a good way to push good causes family, health, wellbeing, domestic violence, cancer care. My role was partly about pushing the charities and about pushing the issues, although I was always conscious that I wasn’t a politician, no-one had elected me, so I was careful not to interfere in policy. But my position gave me opportunities I wouldn’t otherwise have had. I guest-edited part of The Mirror, and had articles in a couple of magazines that let me talk about the issues that are important to me.”
Does Sarah feel fortunate to have the experience of being WPM under her belt?
“Overall, it was a great privilege being able to promote those charities and having the opportunity to represent your country. I have a long list of ‘best moments’ and met some amazing people when they walked through the door of Number 10. Probably the people who made the biggest impression on me were Nelson Mandela and his wife Graa Machel. They were incredible people who made a really strong impression on me.”
Critics of Sarah’s book have focused on the fact that she spends a good deal of time talking about trivia. What she wore, the celebrities she met, the minutiae of security arrangements there’s a nice moment when she gets into the Prime Ministerial Jaguar for the first time and realises she can’t hear the crowds lining the road to Buckingham Palace because the armoured saloon is effectively soundproof and the day-to-day aspects of WPM life all get at least as thorough airing as do the great issues of the day.
“I thought about writing more about those but I’m not a politician that’s Gordon’s job. The truth is that almost all the questions people ask me are about the little things.”
So she tackles issues like paying council tax and the TV licence fee for the Downing Street property. There’s also, however, a sense that this information would not be quite so prominent had the expenses scandal not blown, turning the spotlight on politicians’ financial arrangements.
“It was right that the very small number of people who were doing wrong were discovered that they look at it so that kind of abuse can’t happen again,” Sarah reckons. “But it was a tiny minority who were abusing the system.”
Her husband paid back a little over £12,000 after an inquiry found he made excessive claims for cleaning, gardening and decorating. This upsets Sarah, who says they often shouldered some of the costs of Gordon’s job privately.
“I think the coverage of Gordon that was very personal and very negative was unfair,” she says. “The worst coverage was the stuff that was completely made up and unsubstantiated.”
Such as?
“The bullying story that was complete rubbish. It was never corroborated it was totally without foundation.”
Sarah is referring to allegations early last year that Gordon bullied staff at Number 10. The row took a twist when National Bullying Helpline boss Christine Pratt broke confidentiality to say Number 10 staff had called her helpline. This breach of confidentiality led four out of five patrons of her charity to resign in protest.
What is not in dispute is that Gordon Brown does not possess the ‘chat show host charisma’ of his predecessor, nor does he have the self-assurance that accompanied what many would term Blair’s Messiah Complex. He has a big brain, an incredible work ethic, and very little small talk.
“Gordon is the person he is,” says Sarah. “He’s very hard working, very smart. He holds those around him to high standards. But he has colleagues he’s worked with for decades. That says everything you need to know about a person if they have people who have been colleagues and friends for years. He still goes to the football with his old school friends.”
Gordon is well known for his dedication to Raith Rovers and throughout his premiership spent as many Saturday afternoons at Stark’s Park as he could get away with.
“If you’ve got the strength and support of your closest family and friends, that’s the thing that carries you through. It’s not always easy and it’s not always pleasant, and sometimes it feels very unfair.”
Continued…
Sarah says she is married to a very different man to the one people are used to seeing on television and in newspapers.
“He is committed to the job but he’s equally good at switching off and being a husband and father, or meeting his old friends.”
When it comes to press coverage of her husband, Sarah says she read just enough to keep her informed and not enough to get her down.
“It’s kind of like actors who never read their own reviews. If there was anything someone felt I absolutely had to read, they would generally bring it to me. But, apart from that, I tried to avoid most of it. We had to deal with so many different things through Gordon’s time as Prime Minister. You take what falls on your plate, and you’re too busy dealing with it to worry about much else.
“We had floods, the bomb attack at Glasgow Airport and foot and mouth.”
The latter emergency struck on the first day of a planned two-week holiday in Dorset.
“Gordon had a walk, read a novel then had a kip … then got called back to London to deal with it. That was our six-hour holiday.”
Before Gordon’s first summer in the job was over, Northern Rock had asked the Bank of England for financial help. The banking crisis had begun. This, for Sarah, led to her husband’s finest hour.
“During that time, Britain absolutely led the world in its response to the global financial crisis,” she says. “There was a point where people were going to be queueing outside banks and taking out all their savings. That this was averted was largely down to Gordon. Whatever his critics say about him, none of them can take that away from him.”
There’s a nice scene in the book when the Browns’ first weekend at Chequers coincides with the publication of the final Harry Potter book, and virtually every comfortable chair in the Prime Minister’s grace-and-favour country mansion is occupied by someone engrossed in a copy. JK Rowling is a high-profile supporter of the Labour Party, as well as a personal friend of Sarah herself.
“I’ve known Jo a long time. We support many of the same charities and she’s been a great supporter of the Labour Party. I count her as a good friend.”
The Harry Potter author donated £1 million to the Labour Party in 2008. Unfortunately for Gordon and Sarah, the money wasn’t enough to stem voter dissatisfaction after 12 years of New Labour, and the man described by Tony Blair as the “clunking fist” of British politics was swept from power.
Now that the dust has settled and she has more time where she is happiest, at her home in North Queensferry, is the resulting calm almost something of a relief?
“We had gone into the election wanting a different outcome, obviously, so it was disappointing to lose,” she says. “But the election wasn’t the disaster some people were predicting and Gordon increased his majority in Fife. It was heart-warming to have that level of support.”
Despite losing his grip on the premiership, Sarah insists her husband has no plans to walk away from politics.
“He’s still an MP and he’s very engaged in his constituency work” indeed, the former Prime Minister returned from opening Fife Chamber of Commerce’s new premises as our interview was drawing to a close.
“He was elected for a whole parliament and he’s committed to his job. He’s also very much in demand for his views on the global economic crisis. His work continues on that, because of course we’re not there yet.”Behind the Black Door is out now, published by Ebury Press.Main photo by Brian Aris.
There’s something quite incongruous about visiting Gordon and Sarah Brown’s house. One of a series of large, detached homes in North Queensferry, it boasts splendid views over the Forth though it’s a far cry from the £3.6 million London address Gordon’s predecessor secured against his future income while he was Prime Minister.
I can tell I’ve reached the right house when I see the security cameras, combination lock gates, and a policeman with a submachine gun.
Tall, smartly dressed, confident and articulate, it’s not hard to see why Sarah enjoyed a flourishing business career before becoming the wife of Scotland’s most successful politician of modern times.
Their spacious house has a chaotic friendliness to it that any parent will recognise. Coupled with those splendid views, it’s clear why Sarah dragged her husband back as often as possible during his premiership.
“I never had to twist his arm to get him to come back to Fife, but sometimes work meant he had to be in London,” she tells me. “Living in Downing Street, we tried to have as normal a family life as possible, but it still wasn’t home. Fife has always been our home.”
Famously, the Browns lived in the flat above Number 10 when Gordon was Chancellor, and in the flat above Number 11 when he became Prime Minister.
“Number 11 was slightly more family friendly,” she explains. “It has a lift at the back so the kids could come and go from the back of the house, and the Darlings were happy to move into the number 10 flat. It’s a funny street. There’s actually only numbers 10, 11 and 12. Really, it’s an unfinished housing development started by Sir George Downing.”
Sarah (47) a Twitter fanatic with over 1.1m followers had to deal with being a mum in probably the busiest house in the country.
“About 250 people work in the building, from policy people to IT people and press people,” she continues. “It was quite a hectic living environment, but some of the people, like Alistair and Maggie (Darling) we’d known for years. So it wasn’t like the Chancellor was walking in and I didn’t know him and had to spring to attention.
“You’re living there as an ordinary family and you want that normality. It was easy for Gordon to walk up and join us for supper, then go back to work if he needed to.”
A much more low-key Prime Minister’s wife than her predecessor, Sarah has never sought the limelight for anything other than the promotion of the many charities she’s involved in. She’s only speaking to the press now to publicise the book she’s written on her time in Number 10, Behind the Black Door.
Continued…