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Blair's Successor at Downing Street

Does Gordon Brown Mean Real Change?

By Sebastian Borger in London

Gordon Brown is set to replace Tony Blair as British prime minister. But where will he take the country and how will its relations to the rest of the EU and to the United States change?

When British Finance Minister Gordon Brown officially announced his candidacy to succeed Tony Blair as leader of the Labour Party and British prime minister last week, he explicitly refered to his childhood in a Scottish parsonage. There, his parents taught him "the importance of integrity and decency, of treating people fairly and of duty to others," the 56-year-old explained.

Along with these values came a life-long loyalty to a particular political camp, as made clear by an anecdote recounted by Brown's biographer Paul Routledge. After Labour Party electoral victories, a colleague of his father always intoned "Give thanks unto the Lord" during the Sunday church service; but if the Tories were leading, the congregation had to respond "Unworthy though we be."

After a largely meaningless Labour Party leadership election -- he is the only candidate -- Brown will move into 10 Downing Street on June 27. But first the Scotsman needs to publicly repent before his restive party and a distrustful public, distancing himself from the political choices of his predecessor and announcing a fresh approach to the key political issues.

It's no easy task. After all, Blair wants to "concentrate fully on government," as a government spokesperson assured. Brown can't afford to become too specific. Otherwise he will harm Blair, who is still officially in office.

Politics Is not about Celebrity

Brown's many admirers in the press and at the country's think tanks like to refer to his social democratic leanings. The Blair/Brown government has "shown social democratic results," according to Sunder Katwala from the Fabian Society -- a think tank close to the Labour Party. But that was never spoken about, Katwala argues, because Blair was always focused on the political center. "That will change in the future."

Brown has openly distanced himself from the style and the political choices of his predecessor. A government under his leadership will be "a government humble enough to know its place, where I will always strive to be on the people's side," Brown said, adding that "I do not believe politics is about celebrity."

However, Brown remains vague on the issues. There is talk of greater efforts in the area of public housing. Five low-emission, so-called "eco-cities" in the southeast of England are to alleviate the lack of housing there and provide new impulses for environmental protection, and obsolete Royal Air Force bases are being considered as possible locations. Brown has also promised the British parliament greater powers -- including the decision on whether or not to send British troops abroad, which until now has formally fallen to the prime minister.

Brown says he will go to Afghanistan and Iraq before making any decisions on the British military's two most important foreign deployments. "Mistakes" have been made in Iraq, Brown has said, but without going into details. So far, there has been nothing to suggest Brown disapproved of Britain's involvement in the Iraq war or that he would now demand a faster withdrawal of troops. The British want to withdraw most of their troops from southern Iraq by the end of this year anyhow.

For Brown, good (economic) relations with the United States have always been more important than European unity -- a unity that will once more be put to the test during the negotiations on the planned European constitution. Britain will "hide behind the Poles and the Czechs," Katwala predicts. Both of the new EU countries are hostile to the current attempts to revive the constitution, which was believed dead following its defeat in national referendums in France and the Netherlands.

Brown is considered a far greater euroskeptic than Blair. But unlike Blair, Brown is expected to keep his distance from US President George W. Bush -- even when it comes to the dispute over Iran's nuclear program. There are already rumors among foreign policy experts in London that Brown will put his campaign manager and former foreign minister, Jack Straw, back in the Foreign Office. That would send a clear signal to Washington: Our participation in a military intervention against Iran is out of the question. Unlike Blair, Straw always unambiguously and publicly rejected using military force against Iran, prior to his sudden replacement in May of last year.