PROFILE: Brown, the tenacious fighter, throws in the towel

By Anna Tomforde May 11, 2010, 2:07 GMT

London - Gordon Brown, who became Britain's prime minister and Labour Party leader without a vote three years ago, has been rejected from both positions in a humiliating post-election drama.

Brown is expected to stay on as prime minister until a new party leader is chosen in a few months time, but his political career has come to an end with his announcement that he would not stand for the leadership again.

The decision was triggered by the refusal of the small Liberal Democrat party to do business with Labour as long as Brown was at the helm. Whatever the make-up of the new British government will be, Brown will not be part of it.

The unrelaxed, dour Scot, who had been in the Labour government since 1977, always realized that he was unpopular.

'I am not the star candidate or the best PR man,' he told an election meeting. 'But adversity has been my teacher, honesty has been my best guide, and faith in the future the greatest source of my strength.'

Brown became prime minister and Labour leader in a handover of power from his predecessor, Tony Blair - without a popular mandate and without a party contest.

His three-year tenure rates among the shortest in post-war history, eclipsed only by the one-year premiership of Conservative Alec Douglas-Home in the 1960s.

Winning a fourth consecutive term for Labour was always going to be a tall order after a deep recession, unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a damaging scandal over parliamentary expenses.

Brown, who was chancellor of the exchequer for 10 years in the Blair government, had made the economy his trump card in the election. Only he, he vowed, had the experience and political stamina to secure Britain's fragile recovery.

As storm-clouds gathered over the economy in 2008, Brown led a multibillion bailout of British banks and took a leading role in averting a global crisis from turning into a collapse of the international banking and finance system.

But his reputation abroad as a political heavyweight with expert knowledge of the economy was not matched at home, where Brown was seen by many as the man whose policy of 'spend, spend, spend' in the boom years contributed to Britain's massive debt mountain.

Soon after taking over from Blair in June 2007, cautious Brown gained the reputation of a 'ditherer' when he decided, in the last minute, against calling a snap election that could have cemented his popular mandate.

Poor opinion poll ratings and disaffection with his rule inside the Labour Party led to at least three 'coup' attempts against Brown. The rebellious mood subsided only a few months before the election, with critics warning of an 'impending disaster' for Labour.

For Brown, the son of a Church of Scotland minister, the Labour Party was his heart and soul. He joined the Scottish Labour Party as a teenager and won his first seat to the British parliament in 1983.

He had been fast-tracked into Edinburgh University aged just 16, where he suffered a rugby accident that blinded him in one eye and required lengthy treatment to save the sight in the other.

Swiftly spotted as a rising talent, Brown became Labour's shadow chancellor in 1992. Two years later, he struck a deal with Blair, his 'modernizing' rival, on a handover of power in the event of a Labour victory.

Together, the two men forged the New Labour movement, which triumphed in a landslide election victory in 1997. Much to Brown's frustration, Blair held on for 10 years before, reluctantly, passing the premiership on to Brown.

In 2000, Brown married Sarah Macaulay, a PR executive, with whom he has two sons. The couple suffered the loss of their first child, Jennifer Jane, after her premature birth in early 2001.

Sarah was brought increasingly into the public eye to show the 'softer side' of Brown, who had been accused of 'bullying' Downing Street staff and throwing mobile phones in rages of temper.

Unfortunately for him, that reputation was reinforced by an embarrassing gaffe on the election trail, when Brown, caught out by a microphone attached to his suit, was overheard calling an old-age pensioner a 'bigoted woman.'

After that incident, Brown indicated that he had been contemplating defeat. 'If I can't make a difference any more, I would go off and do something else,' he said. Charity work and writing books would be among his future occupations.