How Ambitious Is Gordon Brown?
Ruthlessly ambitious enough to use the death of his own child to advance his political career:
The Independent
‘She died in our arms’ – Brown on his daughterBy Andrew Grice, Political Editor
Published: 15 September 2006A tearful Gordon Brown has spoken at length about the death of his “beautiful” baby daughter Jennifer Jane four years ago.
His emotional interview suggests that the Chancellor, a notoriously private man, has decided to “open up” to display his human side to both the Labour Party and the wider public. In the past, he has distanced himself from what his allies have described as Tony Blair’s “touchy-feely stuff” .
In a long interview with Sky News, Mr Brown explained: “The public need to know who you are. The public need to know where you came from.”
[…]
Is this really the sort of person who should lead a country or a party? A man who’d make such a calculated decision to expose his and his partmer’s most private emotional moments to the the prurient press and public, purely to further his own personal advantage and lust for power?
Not that Brown would or could ever admit that this is all about his pride and ambition. He of course says that all this tortured soul-baring is done entirely for the greater good of humanity. How very noble of him. The fact there’s a leadership fight on is of course just coincidence. Scandalous to suggest anything else.
He said the memory of Jennifer had inspired he and his wife, Sarah, to help make life better for others, “so some good can come out of the tragedy”.
Oy, pass the sickbag.
Other than the obvious cosmetic and circumstantial differences and a couple of ridiculous seersucker suits I see little in his ambitious and prideful sanctimoniousness to separate Gordon Brown from that well-known US political dead baby and family pimper Ricky Santorum. The only difference is in degree.
Father First, Senator Second
For Rick Santorum, Politics Could Hardly Get More Personal
By Mark Leibovich
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 18, 2005; Page C01
In his Senate office, on a shelf next to an autographed baseball, Sen. Rick Santorum keeps a framed photo of his son Gabriel Michael, the fourth of his seven children. Named for two archangels, Gabriel Michael was born prematurely, at 20 weeks, on Oct. 11, 1996, and lived two hours outside the womb.
Upon their son’s death, Rick and Karen Santorum opted not to bring his body to a funeral home. Instead, they bundled him in a blanket and drove him to Karen’s parents’ home in Pittsburgh. There, they spent several hours kissing and cuddling Gabriel with his three siblings, ages 6, 4 and 1 1/2. They took photos, sang lullabies in his ear and held a private Mass.
“That’s my little guy,” Santorum says, pointing to the photo of Gabriel, in which his tiny physique is framed by his father’s hand. The senator often speaks of his late son in the present tense.
It’s no co-incidence that the Brown interview took place on Sky News, a wholly owned subsidiary of US citizen Rupert Murdoch’s News International Corp.
Murdoch, no commercial fool, knows soapy sanctimony sells – he’s built a whole worldwide media empire on it. The Murdoch-orchestrated morphing of UK into US politics continues apace with this calculated bit of bathos, demeaning the public discourse and reducing debate to National Enquirer-style headlines and ssentimental soundbites – not that this absolves Brown in any way. He knows damned well what Murdoch is about and he also knows he needs the Murdoch press’ support for the leadership, hence this Santorumesque emotional striptease.
Read more: Gordon Brown, New Labour, Leadership contest, Murdoch press, Ricky Santorum, Dead baby
