'Jinxed' Brown bullish over setbacks

By Guto Harri
BBC political correspondent

Gordon Brown paid a surprise visit to troops in Iraq

The BBC's Guto Harri accompanied prime minister Gordon Brown as he travelled to Iraq to pay a surprise visit to British troops.

Gordon Brown cannot have been relishing the long flight, the expected huddle with journalists in the back of the plane, or the prospect of an hour with troops whose former chiefs have recently complained about the lack of kit, their conditions and cash.

And with his current luck, the prospect of flying low over hostile military terrain must have been a little unnerving for the prime minister.

Some journalists certainly wondered aloud if a surface to air missile might have hit our military plane because the prime minister seems to be currently jinxed.

Turning up at the Royal Suite at Heathrow on a cold, dark morning two hours before the flight didn't help.

'Shambolic' security

Security was shambolic. A group of journalists and senior civil servants, all vetted by MI5 and with daily access to some of the most sensitive buildings in London, had to wait more than an hour for a charmless official to get his own copy of a list which everyone else had in their back pocket.

The flight was already delayed when they began scanning box-loads of broadcasting equipment and slowly sending most of us through the metal detectors.

Most, I say, because somewhere, someone's patience must have finally snapped and around five correspondents at the end of the line were suddenly summoned onto the plane without being checked themselves or having their equipment scanned.

Gordon Brown is curiously confident that the public will, ultimately, applaud him for his handling of these ghastly episodes Guto Harri

Then there was nowhere obvious to store the stuff and no allocated seats.

The airline was a Swiss charter specialising in top-end VIP trips but it felt more like Fawlty Towers.

A senior Downing Street official apologised and the prime minister looked a little embarrassed wandering to the back of the plane later on for a tete a tete.

Most of the talk was, understandably, about the visit to Iraq but correspondents rarely get a chance to corner the prime minister in the narrow aisle of a jumbo jet and so much has happened in recent weeks, so much to talk about, it was hard to know where the questions should start.

Note-taking wasn't allowed, but the prime minister chatted with us for more than an hour, and I can say that it was the general feeling among most of the crowd that he came across as more bullish and less battered than we all expected.

Unexpected hurdles

Losing the entire child benefit data clearly wasn't part of his plan when he came to office. He did not expect a Labour funding scandal, or to have to bail out Northern Rock.

It's clearly been frustrating, though Gordon Brown is curiously confident that the public will, ultimately, applaud him for his handling of these ghastly episodes.

He argues that the polls and the moral of parties go up as well as down and he rejects the idea that there are seminal moments in politics when the balance of power or the perception of a leader or his party can change fundamentally.

Letting Northern Rock go under would not have been popular.

When the "noise", as he calls it, dies down people will once again notice the substance, he believes.

The former chancellor still expects credit for a decade of low inflation and growth and argues that a Conservative government would have guaranteed not just one but probably two recessions in that time.

"He's offended by suggestions that the military is strapped for cash, kit or political commitment and views almost anyone claiming so as a Conservative mouthpiece, even if they speak as former chiefs of defence staff.

On Northern Rock, he rightly points out that there would have been an outcry had the government stood aside and allowed it to go under.

On funding, he rejects suggestions that he should have been on top of it personally, pointing out that he's not an accountant or a man who seeks to control every minute detail of key policies - contrary, of course, to the popular perception of him.

Laughing and smiling

Don't be surprised if he turns up at Lisbon next week, despite the fuss over a select committee appearance which seems to clash with the signing of the new European treaty.

I was, I confess, surprised to hear him laugh and to see him smile, not least at the suggestion that all his problems have originated in the north-east of England - the land of Tony Blair, Alan Milburn and Stephen Byers among others, who never describe themselves as Gordon Brown's admirers.

There are problems in Scotland and in Wales too, he said, uncharacteristically inviting us to conclude that the picture is even worse than we'd already assumed.

In so doing, with what seemed like a sincere smile, I wondered, sitting on the Hercules heading for Basra, why he's really shown so little of that charm, self-deprecation and political agility in public over recent weeks when he has been taking a hammering.