Even at the end, he still had them talking. For the best part of a quarter century, Gordon Brown has had the political press corps either scratching its collective head, trying to divine his latest tactical gambit, or else making a gag at his expense. As Brown formally announced his intention to stand down as an MP after a 32-year Commons career, some speculated that the timing was a classic Brownian ploy to sabotage preparations for George Osborne’s upcoming autumn statement, a last bit of partisan news management by a master of the art. Others said it was typically Brown in another sense: the re-announcing of news he’d already pre-announced last week.
And yet the word, when it came, was rather different from what Gordon-watchers have grown used to. It was more personal, for one thing. He delivered it in the Old Kirk in Kirkcaldy, in the shadow of the church where his father, one of the defining influences on his life, used to preach. At his side were wife Sarah and their two sons, the boys so rarely glimpsed that when they appeared with him on the day he left Downing Street in May 2010, the sight was a jolt to those who’d never before conceived of Brown as a father.
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