Читать книгу Gordon Brown: Prime Minister - Tom Bower - Страница 5

Their laughter was raucous. Seated in the Club section of the British Airways aircraft, the ten men were bonded by their love of football and their anticipation of a laddish weekend in Rome. Five months after the general election, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer was laughing with his intimate gang. There was much to celebrate.

On Saturday, 11 October 1997, England was playing Italy in a qualifying match for the World Cup. The valuable tickets for the game had been obtained for the group by Geoffrey Robinson, the paymaster general, as a favour to Gordon Brown, who was seated in the front of the jet. The prospect of football, beer and banter in Rome appealed to the former schoolboy footballer. The game was a male’s world, an emotionally satisfying conclave excluding women. The weekend would also be an opportunity to develop relationships with journalists, whose sympathetic reports about his successes would enhance his reputation and help his dream to become Britain’s prime minister. Brown, the host of many noisy parties during and after his student days in Edinburgh, enjoyed the mixture of politics and sport.

The invitations to the journalists had been issued by Charlie Whelan, the chancellor’s sparky press spokesman, who was seated near Brown. Over the previous years Whelan had regularly offered friendly journalists tickets to special football matches and issued invitations to memorable parties before international fixtures in Robinson’s flat at the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane. ‘Oh, Geoffrey,’ quipped Brown as they flew over Tuscany, ‘your villa is down there. We should have a campaign: one villa one vote.’ The reference to the villa controversially loaned to Tony Blair and his family during the summer triggered more laughter. Brown had been in good form ever since they assembled at Heathrow. ‘What’s the difference,’ he had asked as they waited for the plane, ‘between Jim Farry [the chief executive of the Scottish Football Association] and Saddam Hussein? One is an evil dictator who will stop at nothing, and the other is the leader of Iraq.’ The banter was joined by Ed Balls, the chancellor’s personable and intelligent adviser, and the fourth of the quartet – Brown, Robinson, Balls and Whelan. Balls’s eminence in the Treasury was resented only by the envious and the defeated. The thirty-year-old was the intellectual guide of the chancellor’s conversion from a traditional socialist to the mastermind of New Labour’s appeal to the middle classes. Since Labour’s landslide victory Balls had become guru, gatekeeper and ‘deputy chancellor’ in the Treasury.

The four had unashamedly fashioned their capture of the Treasury as storm troopers assailing a conservative bastion, revolutionaries expelling the old guard. Over more than a decade Gordon Brown had plotted and agonised to achieve that coup. Disputes and distress had marred the route to 11 Downing Street, and five months after his victory the new, unconventional inhabitants of Whitehall incited malicious gossip about the introduction of bull market tactics into Westminster politics, prompting Blairites to accuse Brown of behaving like a Mafia godfather, an accusation he resented.

The only unease among the six journalists was caused by their Club class tickets, each costing £742. Geoffrey Robinson had privately settled the account, leaving a suspicion that the journalists would not be pressed to repay. His guests briefly considered the millionaire’s motives. Robinson’s ebullience made the trip feel like one of those louche jamborees organised by public relations companies for anxious clients. His fortune, earned in suspicious circumstances and concealed in offshore banks, had financed Brown’s private office before the election. For any politician to be associated with Robinson provoked questions. The journalists judged that the chancellor was not suspicious about the motives of their host, whose generosity had relieved the Scotsman’s social isolation in London. Nevertheless, before the jet landed, some resolved that regardless of Charlie Whelan’s inevitable scoffs, their fares would be reimbursed, with a request for a receipt.

The laughter halted. Gordon Brown, dressed in his customary dark suit, white shirt and red tie, fumed, ‘Do you know they’ve sold the Scotland match against Latvia to Channel 5, and only half of Scotland has Channel 5?’ The admirer of Jock Stein had travelled to see Scotland play in Spain during the 1982 World Cup, and was dogged by a grievance about the day’s other qualifying match. The gripe erupted again after the landing at Rome airport.

The privileges of political office had been snatched by the chancellor’s party. On the instructions of Sir Thomas Richardson, the British ambassador, the embassy’s economic secretary, Rob Fenn, welcomed the group at the airport. But rather than drive direct to the embassy, Brown asked Fenn whether he knew anyone in Rome who subscribed to Channel 5. ‘I’ve got to see the Scotland – Latvia match,’ he said. After frantic telephone calls, Peter Waterworth, a first secretary, was unearthed. ‘His mother gave him a Sky subscription for his birthday,’ reported Fenn with relief. ‘Channel 5 comes with the card.’ ‘Well done,’ gushed Brown. Robinson beamed. A brief diplomatic chore over lunchtime had been arranged with Carlo Azeglio Chamoi, the Italian finance minister, to justify the trip. After that, the pleasure could start.

‘Latvia, we love you,’ chanted a group of England fans, spotting Brown step from the ambassador’s car in the centre of Rome. Brown smiled back. Public recognition elated the congenitally clandestine bachelor. Football’s tribalism was a bond, and he assumed that Waterworth, a Manchester United fan from Belfast, would welcome a Scottish fan in his living room. ‘Hello, I’m Gordon Brown,’ smiled the chancellor as Cathy Waterworth opened the door. ‘I’m so grateful that you’ll have us,’ he said, leading thirteen people into the flat before his putative hosts could have second thoughts. Geoffrey Robinson immediately assumed the role of waiter, ferrying bottles of Peroni beer from the fridge at the far end of the flat to the chancellor, already hunched up close to the television, revealing the handicap of his single eye. Preoccupied, Brown uttered only a few comments throughout the match. At half-time he disappeared to be interviewed by a journalist for Monday’s newspaper. Robinson used the opportunity to look at Waterworth’s oil paintings. ‘My father’s the artist,’ explained the host. ‘Would you sell me that one?’ asked the paymaster general. The doorbell rang. A journalist returned with a bunch of flowers for Cathy. When the second half started, Robinson resumed his duties as waiter, and as Scotland’s 2–0 victory seemed assured, the atmosphere became light-hearted. ‘Great,’ announced Brown at the end. After more jokes, he bade farewell. He looked forward to the live match later that night.

The next stop was the British embassy. ‘I wonder how much we’d get if we flogged this lot,’ chortled Whelan in his south London accent as they walked into the marbled, ornately furnished building. The chancellor smiled at the joke directed at Robin Cook, the foreign secretary, one of Labour’s tribe whom Brown, during his fraught journey up the party’s hierarchy, had grown to loathe. They were joined by Stuart Higgins, the editor of the Sun, Tony Banks, the minister for sport, and Jack Cunningham, the minister of agriculture. Neither of the politicians was a ‘Brownite’, and their politeness towards the chancellor was noticeably diplomatic. Standing in the corner was Sir Nigel Wicks, the Treasury’s second permanent secretary. ‘Are you going to the match?’ Wicks was asked. ‘No,’ he replied hesitantly. ‘Why?’ ‘Prudence.’ ‘What?’ ‘I’m here on business, and I would not want my presence in Rome to be misinterpreted.’ The Treasury, some speculated, had contrived the visit to the Italian finance minister as a fig leaf to justify the junket. The final guest, the genial former Manchester United star Bobby Charlton, was uniquely guaranteed Brown’s affection.

Relationships were important to Gordon Brown. His unswerving loyalty to family and friends had marked him as a clan chieftain. The admiration and love he attracted was contrasted with his ferocious hatred of others. ‘Peter Mandelson is in Rome,’ the ambassador told Brown while the champagne was poured. ‘But he returned to London rather than watch the match.’ The chancellor’s relief was unconcealed. His fraught relationship with his former friend was a source of widespread gossip.

The brief visit to the embassy mirrored the conflicts of interest, personalities and policies swirling around every nuance of the chancellor’s hectic life. Just as renowned as his intelligence, education and shrewdness were his vendettas. ‘Never hate your enemies,’ said Michael Corleone, the son of Mario Puzo’s Godfather. ‘It affects your judgement.’ Gordon Brown ignored that advice, but did embrace Corleone’s confession to his lawyer: ‘I don’t feel I have to wipe everybody out, Tom. Just my enemies.’ Surrounded by his intimates, the Godfather expected loyalty and obedience towards himself. Those who thwarted his ambitions were despised and occasionally destroyed. His justification was faultless: his beloved party and his ambition required submission to his agenda. In return for his trust, his ‘family’ honoured his requirements.

Driving in a minibus from the embassy past the Colosseum, the home of bloody gladiatorial contests, towards Rome’s Olympic stadium for the football match, the chancellor might have reflected upon the ancient building’s symbolism. Two thousand years earlier, only the fittest survived, and even at the moment of glory, the bloodied victor could be ravaged by the spectators’ dissatisfaction. His party’s antics back home resembled ancient Rome’s lack of generosity. The pernicious undercurrents in Westminster often turned friend into foe. Over the years, Gordon Brown had accumulated many enemies. To win the ultimate prize required a new strategy. Inviting the journalists to Rome was another step to win favour for his inheritance of the premiership.

At the stadium, Brown was seated with Carlo Azeglio Chamoi. The match was enjoyable but by the end at 10.45 p.m., both were disappointed by the goalless draw. Gazing down from the directors’ box, Brown watched as Italy’s supporters and some of the 16,000 England fans began fighting. With drawn batons the police were charging the Britons. Patiently, Brown waited for two hours in the minibus until the six journalists could leave the stadium. Robinson had fretted that his reservation at Harry’s Bar for a lobster and champagne dinner would be cancelled, but the famous restaurant loyally waited for the party, as did the soprano hired to sing for them. The bill for the enjoyable dinner was paid by Robinson.

After the group’s return to London, the trip attracted some curiosity. For a time the presence of the journalists with the chancellor was suppressed by some newspapers, and when, seven weeks later, Geoffrey Robinson became embroiled in a scandal about his financial dependence on an offshore tax haven, some of those journalists who had accepted his hospitality were inclined to vouch for his probity. Consumed by self-righteousness, Gordon Brown disparaged those criticising his paymaster, and steadfastly resisted any public admission of Robinson’s wrongdoing. Concessions, he knew, signalled weakness. Thanks to Brown’s support, Robinson would survive the first accusations of sleaze. But the lifebelt caused many to puzzle about the chancellor’s psychology. His defiance was forged, some suggested, during his Scottish childhood in order to camouflage his spiritual torment. Others speculated why one character simultaneously aroused extremes of sympathy and outrage. Gordon Brown himself volunteered few clues. Incapable of self-analysis, he zealously sought to prevent outsiders from penetrating the origins of and reasons for his emotions. An unmentioned spirituality certainly lurked among the foundations of his life. The possibility of entering the priesthood had never featured among his ambitions, yet the conflict between good and evil had dominated his formative years. The mystery was his journey from his childhood credo of God and love to the less forgiving characteristics that would dominate his adulthood. His ostensible compassion for humanity confused the search for clues about that transition yet bequeathed the riddle: Gordon Brown, saint or sinner?