Brown Calmly Prevails In First Days as Premier

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 4, 2007; A10

LONDON, July 3 -- Last Wednesday, Gordon Brown stepped up to a microphone outside the fabled black door of 10 Downing Street to address his nation for the first time after becoming prime minister about an hour earlier. Without a smile, he promised to "try my utmost" and soon signed off somberly, like a teacher assigning homework: "Now let the work of change begin."

In the next few days, Britain's strait-laced new leader was forced to deal with floods that caused more than $2 billion in damage in central England, leaving hundreds of families homeless, and failed car bombings in London and Glasgow. His response has been careful, steady and without a single glittering turn of phrase -- a far cry from the telegenic empathy and pitch-perfect oratory of his predecessor, Tony Blair.

And Brown's popularity ratings are soaring. A Times of London poll published Monday found that 77 percent of Britons think Brown is a strong leader, up 14 points from a month ago. Analysts here said Brown, in addition to enjoying a predictable honeymoon period with Britain's carnivorous press, is proving to be a far more formidable politician and reassuring leader than many people expected.

"It's been a good week, a fantastic week, really," said Guillaume Arth, 32, a marketing manager in London, who added that Brown's first week reminded him of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's triumphant leadership during the 1982 Falklands War. "It's the best start he could have hoped for. In times of crisis it's the leader's job to deliver a calm message, to appear in control, and he did."

While pundits predicted for a decade that Brown's serious and wonkish style would be a liability when he eventually became prime minister, especially following a natural communicator like Blair, Britons seem to be savoring the change in tone at Downing Street, especially in a time of crisis.

"Brown has been more measured, more calm and less excitable, and I think it's gone down well," said Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain. "It's a welcome change."

Brown began by engineering a surprising political coup on the eve of taking office; he helped persuade a well-known Conservative Party member, Quentin Davies, to defect to the Labor Party -- and write a scathing, public letter to Conservative leader David Cameron, Brown's chief political opponent. The defection left the Conservatives steaming and off-balance, and analysts marveled at Brown's previously unknown sense of theatrical timing.

He has disarmed critics by sharing power, starting with appointments of some key Blair allies to his cabinet. On Tuesday, addressing the House of Commons for the first time as prime minister, Brown proposed a broad transfer of powers from the prime minister to Parliament. Without mentioning the Iraq war, which cost Blair much of his public support, Brown proposed moving the power to send the military to war from his office to Parliament.

He also proposed giving away the prime minister's traditional power to choose Church of England bishops and judges and ratify international treaties. And he proposed U.S.-style confirmation hearings in Parliament for his appointments to important government posts, and a debate about whether to establish a U.S.-style Bill of Rights.

"He's a quiet toughie, a little bit like Teddy Roosevelt -- speak softly and carry a big stick," said Anthony King, professor of government at the University of Essex. "It's been a remarkable performance."

Brown's response to the incidents -- in which a group of foreign-born doctors living in Britain allegedly plotted to detonate car bombs -- has suggested a subtle but important change from the Blair era. After bombings here in July 2005, Blair proposed major changes in terror laws -- notably outlawing speech "glorifying" terrorism -- that many Muslims regarded as a generalized attack on their religion.

Mohammed Shafiq, 28, spokesman for the Ramadhan Foundation, a national Muslim youth organization, said Blair's response to those bombings "demonized Muslims." He said increased powers for police to stop and search people were used largely against young Muslim men. And he said Blair's attempt to change laws to allow terrorism suspects to be held for 90 days without charge was an unfair proposal aimed at Muslims. Parliament eventually agreed to a 28-day limit on such detentions -- a major defeat for Blair.

"Brown's government has not had the knee-jerk reaction like Blair's," Shafiq said. "Brown has been trying to bring people together. The contrast is amazing."

In a low-key BBC interview Sunday, and in other public statements on the failed car bombings, Brown has not used the word "Muslim." A Brown spokesman said that was deliberate, just as Brown intends to avoid the phrase "war on terror," which some Muslims see as a euphemism for targeting Islam. The spokesman said Brown was modifying his language to encourage a "strong consensual approach in relation to all the communities."

Brown described al-Qaeda as "a terrorist cause that is totally unacceptable to mainstream people in every faith in every part of the world." And he has been at pains, analysts said, to frame the problem of extremist violence not as a struggle against Islam, but as a struggle against individual criminals.

"The prime minister has made it clear that those who carry out these attacks are the enemy of all of us, and you can't hold responsible an entire faith group over the actions of a few individuals," Bunglawala said. Others have noted that Brown's political fortunes were helped by the fact that only an attacker was injured in the failed bombings.

Brown's most visible partner during his first week has been Jacqui Smith, 45, the high school economics teacher turned politician Brown chose to become Britain's first female home secretary. One of the most powerful people in government, the secretary oversees immigration and domestic security matters.

On Monday, Smith made her first appearance in the House of Commons and gave a short, serious and emotionless address on the bombing investigation that seemed to fit the Brown era perfectly. Smith left even her critics nodding their heads in agreement; David Davis, a leading member of the Conservative Party, praised her "calmness and dignity."

While Smith vowed that "we will not be intimidated by terror," she stayed clearly on the Brown script by not mentioning Muslims and by referring to terrorists as "criminals whose victims come from all walks of life, communities and religions."