Accepted to University at age 16Friday, October 30 2009
click on pic to zoom in
The national flag of United KIngdom....
The Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting begins in Port-of-Spain on November 27 and continues for three days. Fifty-one heads or their representatives will assemble at the Hyatt for the talks. Two countries have been suspended—the Fiji Islands which was suspended from membership on September 21, 2009 and Nauru, which is in arrears. We continue today a daily feature on the Commonwealth and feature the Heads of these States who are expected in Port-of-Spain in November.
James Gordon Brown, 58, is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party. Brown became Prime Minister in June 2007, after the resignation of Tony Blair and three days after becoming leader of the governing Labour Party.
Immediately before this he had served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour government from 1997 to 2007 under Tony Blair.
Brown has a PhD in history from the University of Edinburgh and spent his early career working as a television journalist. He has been a Member of Parliament since 1983; first for Dunfermline East and since 2005 for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. As Prime Minister, he also holds the offices of First Lord of the Treasury and the Minister for the Civil Service.
Brown’s time as Chancellor was marked by major reform of Britain’s monetary and fiscal policy architecture, transferring interest rate setting powers to the Bank of England, by a wide extension of the powers of the Treasury to cover much domestic policy and by transferring responsibility for banking supervision to the Financial Services Authority. Controversial moves included the abolition of Advance Corporation Tax (ACT) relief in his first budget, and the removal in his final budget of the 10 percent “starting rate” of personal income tax which was introduced in 1999.
After an initial rise in opinion polls, Brown’s time as Prime Minister has seen his approval ratings fall and the Labour Party suffer its worst local election results in 40 years. Despite public and parliamentary pressure on his leadership, he remains leader of the Labour Party.
Brown’s early girlfriends included the journalist Sheena McDonald and Princess Margarita, the eldest daughter of exiled King Michael of Romania. Brown married Sarah Macaulay in a private ceremony at his home in North Queensferry, Fife, on August 3, 2000. They have two children, John Macaulay and James Fraser.
In November 2006, James Fraser was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. On December 28, 2001 a daughter, Jennifer Jane, was born prematurely and died on January 8, 2002. Gordon Brown commented at the time that their recent experiences had changed him and his wife. Sarah Brown rarely makes official appearances either with or without her husband. She is inevitably much sought after to give interviews. She is, however, patron of several charities and has written articles for national newspapers related to this. At the 2008 Labour Party Conference Mrs Brown caused surprise by taking to the stage to introduce her husband for his keynote address. Since then, her public profile has increased.
Despite being the son of a Church of Scotland minister Brown has rarely alluded to his own religious faith, referring not to God and religion but to his “moral compass” and to his parents being his “inspiration”. He is seemingly keen to keep his religion a private matter. According to the Guardian he is a member of the Church of Scotland.
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.
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 MA in 1972, and stayed on to complete his PhD (which he gained ten years later in 1982), titled The Labour Party and Political Change in Scotland 1918-29.
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 document The Red Paper on Scotland.
From 1976 to 1980 he was employed as a lecturer in Politics at Glasgow College of Technology — in the 1979 general election, Brown stood for the Edinburgh South constituency and lost to the Conservative candidate, Michael Ancram From 1980 he worked as a journalist at Scottish Television, later serving as current affairs editor until his election to parliament in 1983. He also worked as a tutor for the Open University.
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.
Having led the Labour Movement Yes campaign, refusing to join the cross-party Yes for Scotland campaign, during the 1979 Scottish devolution referendum, while other senior Labour politicians — including Robin Cook, Tam Dalyell and Brian Wilson — campaigned for a No vote, Brown was subsequently a key participant in the Scottish Constitutional Convention, signing the Claim of Right for Scotland in 1989.
After the sudden death of Labour leader John Smith in May 1994, Brown 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 former 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.
However, since becoming Chancellor, inflation has been kept under control, consistently below 5%, but unemployment increased to 7.9%.
Brown’s ten years and two months as Chancellor of the Exchequer made him the longest-serving Chancellor in modern history.
