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James Gordon Brown (born 20 February 1951) is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, the current Member of Parliament for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath and the Leader of the Labour Party since 27 June 2007. Before being named Prime Minister he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Tony Blair from 1997 to 2007.
Gordon Brown was born in Govan, in Glasgow son of a Church of Scotland minister. He graduated from Edinburgh with First Class Honours M.A. in history in 1972. He completed his Ph.D. in 1982.
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 Ph.D. 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.
After the sudden death of Labour leader John Smith in May 1994, Brown was tipped as a potential party leader. It has long been rumoured a deal was struck between Blair and Brown at the Granita restaurant in Islington,[12] in which Blair promised to give Brown control of economic policy in return for Brown not standing against him in the leadership election.[13] 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. He publicly committed Labour to following the Conservatives' spending plans for the first two years after taking power.
Following a reorganisation of parliamentary constituencies in Scotland, Brown became MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath at the 2005 election.
Brown's ten years and two months as Chancellor of the Exchequer set several records. He was the longest-serving Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer ever, ahead of Denis Healey, who was Chancellor for 5 years and 2 months from 5 March 1974 to 4 May 1979. On 15 June 2004, he became the longest continuous serving Chancellor of the Exchequer since the Reform Act 1832 (before that, Nicholas Vansittart holds the record with 1812-1823), passing the figure of 7 years and 43 days set by David Lloyd George (1908-1915). However, William Gladstone was Chancellor for a total of 12 years and 4 months in four distinct terms between 1852 and 1882.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses some material from the Wikipedia article Gordon Brown .
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