Gordon Brown’s claim on Andrew Marr’s show yesterday to be a “pretty ordinary guy” has occasioned much mirth, not least because of its echo – subconscious or otherwise – of Tony Blair’s famous remark in the midst of the Ecclestone Affair 11 years ago that he was a “pretty straight sort of guy.” As one senior Labour figure put it to me: “The one thing Gordon just is not, is ordinary.”
But support for the PM’s description of himself comes in Adam Boulton’s gripping new account of the Blair Administration, Tony’s Ten Years, which I heartily recommend to all CoffeeHousers. As part of a much broader analysis, Boulton compares and contrasts pub anecdotes involving the two men. A visit to the Duke of Wellington in Southampton in 1997 with Blair was “ a rather dislocated experience”, the Labour leader being keen to order some wine from room service but Alastair Campbell twisting the leader’s arm to go to the boozer. When they got there, Blair ordered half a Guinness, the music was too loud, there was a frisson of awkwardness with the landlord, and, as soon as they decently could, everybody “pleaded pressure of work and skulked back to the hotel.”
In contrast, Boulton records, the supposedly uptight Brown was a pleasure to encounter in the Marquis of Granby in Westminster:
Brown was no particular friend of ours. We would move off to our own corner once we’d got our drunks. But he wasn’t having that. He came down the bar, greeted us by name, asked about our Christmases and insisted on buying a round. We stood around chatting normally as the pub filled up and more arrivals joined our group, For what it was worth, Brown was at ease in the pub and with a random group of people around him. Blair wasn’t.
As Chuck Berry so rightly put it: it goes to show you never can tell.
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