Sarah Brown is on a roll. A glittering dinner in New York with Sarah Palin and
Queen Rania of Jordan. A fabulous fashion soiree at 10 Downing Street. And
the masterstroke, that speech at the Labour party conference, ostensibly
introducing her husband, but in fact doing more to enhance his reputation
than all his pronouncements on cancer patients and nursery places put
together.
“Poised, relaxed and good-looking, Sarah Brown was everything her husband
isn’t,” noted one smitten broadsheet newspaperman. “She didn’t gush about
her husband but highlighted him as a family man dedicated to the country,”
noted the Sun. “This is one great woman whose discreet and steady backing
may just make the nation see Gordon as a great man too.”
A year into the role of the prime minister’s wife, Brown has repositioned
herself so stealthily that, until she strode on to the stage at the G-Mex
Centre, in Manchester, few people had noticed her. Unlike Cherie Blair, who
was caught on camera opening the door in her nightie and rarely had her foot
far from her mouth for 10 years, Brown took her time to attract public
attention. “I don’t think I had ever thought about her until her conference
introduction on Tuesday,” says a lifelong Labour activist.
Unusually for a former PR person, Brown is private and reserved. In her former
job she joked: “Julia (Hobsbawm, her business partner) goes to lunch so I
don’t have to.” One Westminster insider met her for the first time at a
Downing Street reception in the summer and found that her loyal desire not
to say the wrong thing left her all but tongue-tied. “She had almost nothing
to say. It was really awkward. I didn’t want to ask her about her children,
or any of the other things you would discuss with a politician’s spouse. I
asked her about her charity work but she was very unforthcoming. I found her
a bit of a nightmare.”
Being the prime minister’s wife has never been easy and the standards expected
have risen considerably because of Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.
You are damned if you speak out and have an opinion, like Cherie Blair, and
treated with suspicion if, like Brown earlier on, you keep your head down.
“I feel sorry for Sarah and the endless public fixation with her appearance
and clothes,” says one commentator. “She is not naturally stylish, she does
not have a great figure and their family culture is so austere that she is
never going to bring in a Carole Caplin to help her make the most of what
she’s got.”
No one would enjoy the style experts of Fleet Street unleashing their claws on
your decision to wear tights in those painfully posed holiday snaps, or the
crumpled jacket you picked out when meeting President Sarkozy’s supermodel
wife. But the role was sprung on her.
When Harold Wilson’s wife, Mary, was given the keys to 10 Downing Street, she
was so nervous she was physically sick. Brown, however, married Gordon when
he was already chancellor of the exchequer and she was Sarah Macaulay,
promoting charities and left-wing magazines. She knew when she took her
wedding vows in the garden of their home in North Queensferry, Fife, that
she was marrying a man whose dearest ambition was to be prime minister.
She laid the groundwork while they were still living next door to Number 10.
In 2001 she gave up her job and dedicated herself to unpaid labour: as a
wife, mother and charity fundraiser. Years at the business end of politics
and the media left her in no doubt that her husband’s rough edges had to go.
The bitten nails, wonky teeth, indifferent suits and his idea that the
public sector borrowing requirement was a suitable subject for small talk
would not impress the electorate.
There was huge public sympathy for the Browns in 2002 when their first child,
Jennifer, died aged 10 days. They handled the tragedy with dignity. Brown
answered all 14,000 letters of condolence herself and set up a charity,
PiggyBankKids, which funds research into pregnancy and birth complications
at Simpson Maternity hospital, in Edinburgh, as well as supporting other
children’s initiatives.
Ian Laing, a consultant neonatologist who works closely with Brown on the
Jennifer Brown Research Fund, has nothing but praise for a woman who has
become a friend. “She is very wise. She attends our committee meetings and
gives a lot of excellent advice. She has great business sense and is very
shrewd about her suggestions.” With her backing, the fund supports four
young research scientists — two neonatologists and two obstetricians —
rather than buying specialist equipment. “There are other charities which do
that,” says Laing.
“She took this broader approach. These researchers would not otherwise have
had the opportunity to do this quality of work, and they will go on
throughout their careers to fund other young doctors in this area.”
The welfare of women and children has become a theme in Brown’s charity work
and her PR skills, contacts and full-time residence in the corridors of
power have been deployed to help Women’s Aid, Maggie’s Cancer Care and
others. Her choices are always astute: they are personal, thoughtful,
appropriate and display both her independence and social conscience. Unlike
previous incumbents at 10 Downing Street, she moves in discreet and unshowy
ways.
Apart from her husband, perhaps the greatest beneficiary of her eye for the
main chance has been the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood, the
organisers of the dinner in New York last week. Brown wrotethe introduction
to its book, Stories of Mothers Lost, and visited Tanzania where she was
clearly moved by seeing eight tiny, two-day-old orphans, whose mothers had
all died of easily-preventable complications and infections.
As well as flying to New York, Brown has hosted a meeting in 10 Downing
Street, to ask leading female executives in the UK and the US to persuade
their corporations to tackle women’s and babies’ health. With her PR’s
instinct, she hosted a lunch for London’s female movers and shakers to
promote the same cause. The special guest was Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.
Much of the extensive coverage of the event was devoted to Bruni-Sarkozy’s
smouldering eyes and Dior coat, but the charity was mentioned on every page.
Brown also recruited Naomi Campbell, the supermodel, to the cause, giving her
a copy of Stories of Mothers Lost, and talking about her experience of
losing Jennifer. Campbell held a catwalk show in aid of the charity as part
of London Fashion Week. The pictures were all of Cilla Black in a top hat
and little else but it was more flattering coverage for the alliance.
Kathy Lette, the novelist and friend, says: “What I like about Sarah, is she
uses her position for good. The alliance is one of her passions. She has
lifted the profile enormously of that heinous crime against women.”
Brown has used fashion, parties and children to nudge her husband out of his
comfort zone and into a brighter, more voter-friendly place. It is no
coincidence that Campbell’s fashion show received extensive coverage
in Grazia, the influential fashion weekly magazine that has identified a
massive swing to David Cameron among its affluent, educated, female
readership.
Taken beside Gordon Brown’s day to day concerns with the crumbling economy,
the price of oil and the desire of his colleagues to stab him in the back,
hanging out with supermodels and arranging fundraising events sounds trivial
in the extreme. But voters are a tricksy bunch who want more than whizz kid
with a calculator. They want a warm, believable human being. With Brown at
his side, that is what he is starting to become.
Brown’s other secret weapons are her friends. They are loyal and dedicated.
Her next-door neighbour, Alistair Darling’s wife Maggie, is a friend and
their teenage daughter Anna is a regular babysitter at No 10. Many detected
her influence behind JK Rowling’s decision to donate £1m to the
credit-crunched Labour party. Other friends use their influence in quieter
ways. Lette hosts dinners and parties, seats the prime minister next to
Stephen Fry, introduces him to Kylie Minogue. They, in turn, cross
seamlessly into her charity work. Davina McCall, for example, appears
alongside Brown in Eve magazine this month, talking about motherhood. There
is also a prominent quote from her on the PiggyBankKids website. If she can
sell hair dye, what can she do for brand Brown?
There are two people who have been conspicuously absent from Brown’s strategy.
Her sons John and Fraser, who suffers from cystic fibrosis, are off limits
and Brown is understood in Westminster circles to have had a low period
after Fraser’s birth.
The boys live in Downing Street and John attends a local state school but
there are no photo calls, Christmas cards or magazine spreads. They
accompanied their parents to the Olympic Games in Beijing and a picture of
the little lads cheering on Team GB would have been as much of a boost to
the prime minister as the medal haul.
This makes their parents’ decision to leave them out of the hoopla of politics
all the more impressive. But as long as her sons are out of the picture,
Brown is happy to be photographed beside some of the world’s most beautiful
women if it will further her husband’s career.
Standing beside Campbell or Mme Bruni-Sarkozy? Greater love hath no woman than
she is prepared to do that.
I thought Brown's family were not to be props!? If people fall for stunts like that, then they deserve all they get from Labour!!
John Edgar, Cupar, Fife, Scotland
And who elected Sarah Brown?
Of what relevance is Sarah Brown's touch, be it ever so human, to the relationship that exists between the New Labour government and the public?
Robert, Hull, UK
It is not Sarah, but her husband, who is running the country and in that she has no say. She can twiddle at the edges on his image , but it does not make him a better prime minister, or competent to run the economy. He is still using the Campbell-era cheap tricks and is still cluelessly power crazed
Karen, London,
people musn't blame brown for their irresponsible financial behaviour.they didn't complain when they spent all those loans and remortgaging their houses.nobody forced them to get into debt.when things go wrong all people want to do is to look for an alibi for their own mistakes.TAKE RESPOSIBILITY
john small, canterbury, uk
Dear Lord, please save us from American style politics...we really don't deserve it.
judy, Liverpool, England
All Sarah did was introduce her husband. It wasn't fantastic and it has done absolutely NOTHING for the country. Since when does marrying someone make them qualified to judge their competence as Prime Minister and lecture us on who is right to lead the country.
Donna Walker, Effingham, England
Great; problems solved for those of us who do not belong to this unreal world. Brown presided over the massive growth of personal debt, people are getting flung out of their houses, mortgage payments are increasing, prices on the up. Naomi Campbell and Stephen Fry? Is somebody out of touch here?
Michael Dixon, Sunderland, England