Change in Britain…on the face of it
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has handed over power now to his successor, Gordon Brown, and the British media are riveted by every aspect of this changeover. Here’s a particularly odd one… Simon Jenkins plumbs the depths of analysis on Brown’s potential leadership from his expressions….non-verbal ones.
Shakespeare looked for ‘the mind’s construction in the face’, and few have a stormier expression than the next PM. So what does the Brown scowl tell us, asks Simon Jenkins.
He really gets into this question…
What can be done about Gordon Brown’s face? Each day he is commanded by his team to relax, smile, dress better, talk straighter, be nicer to people he does not know. But one subject is never raised, his face. He is bid to alter his personality to suit the public whim, but his face is taken as given. Behind his back there is a deluge of comment on that scowling, moody, resentful, disjointed visage. Don’t mention it, goes the cry, but we don’t quite trust that face.
Tony Blair’s open, sunny countenance has been his principal career asset. His face was his fortune, bespeaking an easygoing, likable, ordinary sort of guy. Blair passed the elevator and barbecue tests with flying colours. Brown’s face in contrast compared with a wet Sunday afternoon in Kirkcaldy.
One must appreciate the turn of a phrase in British humor….or humour.
When Blair smiles his face lights up. A Brown smile is awful to behold. The mouth seems engaged in a messy divorce from the eyes, which narrow into slits. The cheek muscles protest at being summoned from moody slumber to a task way beyond their calling. Brown’s face harbours some epic quarrel with the world, or at least a violent disagreement with an oyster.
I wonder how long it took Mr. Jenkins to write this amusing piece.
Yet Brown’s face is essentially handsome. Early portraits show a mass of dark hair framing a saturnine brow and intelligent, watchful eyes. The picture that graces the cover of Tom Bower’s biography has the hands covering the mouth, much to its advantage.
Trouble only begins when the face, particularly the mouth, starts to move. The lips seem operated by a Treasury ventriloquist, while the eyes narrow and deaden. Brown never looks as if he is about to say something interesting. Nor does he capitalise on the best feature of his voice, its Scottish lilt, turning it into a machine gun of government statistics.
Mr. Brown’s mouth has started to move for the first time as the new leader of the Labour Party.
Mr Brown told delegates: “It is with humility, pride and a great sense of duty that I accept the privilege and the great responsibility of leading our party and changing our country.
He talked a lot about change.
“We need to change to meet the new challenges.
“So, as people’s aspirations and priorities change, we the Labour party, must renew ourselves as the party of change.
“Our mission has always been to be the party of progressive change. Our party was born because of a demand for change.
“Once again we are called to be the party of change.”
That’s always the political mantra, the slogan and the promise, no matter what country, eh? They don’t always specify what that change means, but Brown did. It kind of covered everything. And it started by covering his own background, so people would know – beyond the caricatures – who he is.
He said he wanted to share his personal values, saying: “All I believe and all I try to do comes from the values that I grew up with – duty, honesty, hard work, family and respect for others.
“And this is what my parents taught me and will never leave me: that each and every one of us has a talent, each and every one of us should have the chance to develop their talent and that each of us should use whatever talents we have to enable people least able to help themselves.
And so I say honestly: I am a conviction politician.
“My conviction that everyone deserves a fair chance in life. My conviction that each of us has a responsibility to each other. And my conviction that when the strong help the weak it makes us all stronger.”
Mr Brown went on: “I joined this party as a teenager because I believed in these values. They guide my work, they are my moral compass. This is who I am.
I wonder what Mr. Jenkins and his colleagues are thinking of his mouth now.
They’re only giving him a short time to prove convincing. And the Queen is only giving him a short leash to make those changes.
Sir Robin Janvrin, her private secretary, has passed on a message that the man who is destined to become Her Majesty’s eleventh Prime Minister should sit by the telephone to await his summons. Only when Tony Blair has left the palace – once again a humble backbench Labour MP – after tendering his resignation will the phone in Brown’s office ring with news that he should make the short car journey down the Mall…
He will face a nervous wait on Wednesday lunchtime before he finally gets his hands on power. Buckingham Palace has let it known that the Queen, ever a stickler for constitutional tradition, will be calling the shots.