LONDON, May 4 (UPI) -- Whatever the result of the British general election when the result is declared Friday, a dour Scotsman called Gordon Brown has been a big winner. Threatened with eclipse when the campaign got under way in March, despite his powerful performance as finance minister for the past eight years, Brown has carved his claim to succeed Tony Blair into stone.
The Labor government has been alternately buttressed and weakened by the tricky relationship between the two men, friends and rivals since the long years of opposition in the 1980s, dominated by Margaret Thatcher. Blair, a bright young lawyer, was initially seen as a lightweight by contrast with Brown, the heavyweight Scottish historian of the labor movement with whom he shared an office.
Blair's easy charm and media skills won him the leadership, along with a private deal sealed at the Granita restaurant in North London that Brown would back Blair, and in return Blair some day would stand down in Brown's favor.
But as the controversial Iraq war and its bloody aftermath have weakened Blair's position, Brown's impatience has threatened to spill over into civil war at the top of the government. Blair became increasingly the centrist and modernizer, and Brown the custodian of Labor Party values and tradition. Blair wanted to move ahead with more free-market reforms for the welfare state. At the party conference 18 months ago, Brown threw down the gauntlet, declaring: "You don't defeat the Tories by invitation or by better presentation, but by Labor policies and Labor reforms grounded in our Labor values."
It became nasty. Blair's own coterie of supporters in the government know that their careers are threatened if Brown succeeds Blair, and tried to take over the party machinery from the canny Scot. One of Blair's closest allies, former (and unsuccessful) Cabinet minister Alan Milburn was brought back into the Cabinet and given Brown's usual job of running the election campaign. There was talk of Brown being demoted after the election.
But then the Blair campaign stalled, and the opinion polls began to hammer home the sobering warning that over half of the voters no longer trusted their prime minister. There was not a great deal of trust for his opponent, Conservative leader Michael Howard, but the politician who consistently scored over 60 percent on trust was Gordon Brown.
Inevitably, Brown and his team were brought back into the limelight. For the past week, it has been Brown and Blair as TB-GB, the inseparable twins on the campaign trail. And in one seminal moment when the two men faced a joint press conference, Brown was asked - for the first time - if he would have gone to war against Iraq if he had been prime minister, Brown paused for a very long two seconds, nodded firmly and answered "Yes."
Blair's look of gratitude could have melted an iceberg.
The supporting characters tell the story. Watch the spring in the step of Brown's allies like Transport Minister Alastair Darling and Trade Minister Douglas Alexander, Treasury Minister John Healy and Paymaster General Dawn Primarolo and Brown's young aides like Ed Balls and Ed Milliband. They believe themselves to be the Cabinet ministers of tomorrow.
Blair has sought constantly into haul the campaign away from Iraq and onto the economy, where Labor's record is strongest - and that is Gordon Brown's department. Over the past eight years that Brown has run British finances, Britain has grown each year faster than its German and French partners and competitors, and unemployment has been cut to half their levels. Brown can claim to have pulled off an economic miracle, keeping Britain at the top of Europe's growth league, and making the money to revitalize the public services like health and education that British voters put at the top of their concerns.
There may be a lurking irony here that could come back to haunt Brown, if and when he follows Blair as prime minister. Some industrialists are warning that Britain's years of uninterrupted economic growth may be drawing to a close, as regulations and red tape squeeze entrepreneurs and strong currency produces record trade deficits.
Brown's critics cite the discreet but steady rise in sales and fuel and other taxes that are taking the state's share of GDP up to 42 percent - and spurring inflation. Other critics point to the slow deflation of the bubble in property process and the consequent decline in consumer spending which has hitherto been the main engine of growth. Having worked so long to earn his current reputation as Britain's best finance minister in decades, Brown could as prime minister be confronted with its unraveling amid economic crisis.
But for the moment, Brown is the man of the hour for the Labor Party, the old stalwart who came in to save Blair's faltering campaign. At least that is the line being spun by Brown's allies, hungry for the power they see riding his coat tails. But Blair too is singing the praises of his old partner as a man who "will make a very fine prime minister." For Brown, they are sweetest words of all, so long as Blair can be made to stick by the promise they entail.
