New British leader the "anti-Blair"

LONDON — He shows up for work in famously drab ties with his nails bitten to the quick. He hates networking and didn't marry until he was 49. He's the glowering figure often seen harrumphing on the bench behind his preternaturally poised boss, Prime Minister Tony Blair, in the House of Commons.

You might say he's the anti-Blair.

The Shakespearean conflict that has been the brooding back story to Britain's leadership ends today when Gordon Brown, the brilliant and somber treasury chancellor who has stood in Blair's shadow for 13 years, becomes Britain's 52nd prime minister.

As Blair submits his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II and Brown makes the journey from No. 11 Downing St. to No. 10, the two political leaders not only pass the torch of government but conclude a dramatic saga of intense friendship and rancorous rivalry that has afflicted both men and transformed the politics and economy of modern Britain.

"They were kind of like a couple who've been married for a long time. They got on each other's nerves," said a former Cabinet official who, like many interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity.

As he takes control, most closely watched will be Brown's stance on Iraq, where British troop numbers have rapidly fallen through 2007 and soldiers are stationed on the fringes of the southern city of Basra.

Blair left his successor an option to call back more of the remaining 5,500 personnel by 2008, an opportunity likely to be grasped by a leader with a national election to call before June 2010.

"His hands, whilst not quite clean, are certainly not sullied," said Alasdair Murray, the director of CentreForum, a liberal think tank. Brown can "portray it as Blair's war and differentiate himself."

Brown also may sanction a future inquiry on Iraq, similar to the U.S. Study Group, British media have reported. Britain has to "admit where we make mistakes," Brown told a recent rally, referring to the war.

Brown, 56, the son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister who prizes prudence and duty in contrast to Blair's engaging style, partnered with Blair in fashioning the Labour Party's return to power in 1997. Brown would have led the left-of-center party years ago, had he not deferred to the more dynamic and electable Blair.

Promised the premiership after Blair had his turn, Brown waited in growing frustration and resentment as his longtime friend found first one reason, then another, why it was not the right time to go.

The political marriage between two men seen as exceptional but opposite political virtuosos has paralyzed government when it was bad — and lately it often was — but also produced a remarkable chemistry that created the landmark reforms of New Labour and propelled Britain to an unmatched record of sustained economic growth.

"Gordon and Tony have had an intense relationship," a former Blair aide said. "Mainly intensely good; sometimes intensely bad."

Brown has run the treasury like a powerful fiefdom, giving himself final say on how much money ministers receive in their budgets and often leaving Blair in the dark about the national budget's final tax and spending figures until the last moment.

This was, say those close to them, a result of the famous power-sharing deal the two men cut at a London restaurant in 1994, when Brown agreed not to run for the Labour Party leadership. What he wanted in exchange, according to various reports, was the next shot at the top slot and control over the economy and domestic spending in the meantime.

"The degree of control he had was unprecedented," said Derek Scott, an adviser to former Chancellor Denis Healey who joined Blair's team as top economic adviser.

"Whole discussions of pensions, social security: Ministers would find the budgetary decisions affecting their own departments would be occasionally taken out of their hands," Scott said. "It was quite extraordinary."

Brown's reluctance to delegate is legendary and stems, many said, from his characteristic impatience. "When you get to be prime minister, you can't do everything. Therefore, you've got to trust and empower your colleagues more," a former treasury official said. "But he thinks he's smarter than they are, and he works harder than they do."

Brown always has been intellectually intimidating. "He reads everything. It's really terrifying what he reads. Scary," said Irwin Stelzer, a conservative from the Hudson Institute who has known Brown for years and often opposes him.

Much of who he is, Brown often says, comes from his mother and his Church of Scotland minister father. They filled the house he grew up in with books, music and sports, and taught him the meaning of values such as courage.

Brown's own courage was tested at an early age, when he accelerated through school and entered Edinburgh University at 16. A rugby injury left him blind in one eye and locked in a darkened room for most of a year as doctors tried, with eventual success, to save the other eye.

Immersed in campus politics and studies of early socialists and the early 20th century Labour Party, Brown obtained a degree in history with exemplary first-class honors, and earned his doctorate with the beginnings of a scholarly biography he eventually published on austere Scottish socialist James Maxton, meticulously researched while Blair was at Oxford fronting a rock band.

After graduating, Brown went to work at Scottish television before being elected to Parliament, as Blair was, in 1983.

Brown was quickly a rising star, and he found in Blair an enthusiastic intellectual partner in pulling the old, trade union-dominated Labour Party into a new era of market principles and globalization. In the early days, Blair often deferred to Brown.

But that changed in 1994, when Blair apparently believed he could beat Brown for the Labour leadership and he had the kind of appeal to election-crucial Middle England the formidable Scot would never have.

Brown, by most accounts, eventually agreed Blair was right. He deferred, his friends say, in the interest of the party.

He began waiting for his turn.

As time went on, Brown seemed to smile less and glare more. He underwent a personal trauma when, after marrying public-relations consultant Sarah Macaulay in 2000, their daughter Jennifer, born prematurely, died of a brain hemorrhage when she was 10 days old. The couple has since had two sons, one of whom has been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.

There are differing reports over whether Brown engineered the minimutiny by Labour lawmakers last fall that forced Blair to announce his departure date. Nigel Griffiths, a longtime friend, said Brown was "horrified" at the letter signed by the rebellious deputies demanding the prime minister's departure and had no part in instigating it.

"Gordon coined the phrase, 'The reason we seek power is to give it back to the people,' " said Griffiths, a fellow member of Parliament from Edinburgh.

Associated Press material is included in this report.