Gordon Brown

James Gordon Brown (born 20 February 1951) is a British Labour Party politician, who has been a Member of Parliament (MP) since 1983, currently for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. He served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 until 2010. Brown became Prime Minister in June 2007, after the resignation of Tony Blair and three days after becoming leader of the governing Labour Party. Immediately before this, he had served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government from 1997 to 2007. His tenure ended in May 2010, when he resigned as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party Brown was one of only three people to serve in the Cabinet continuously from Labour's victory in 1997 until its defeat in 2010, the others being Jack Straw and Alistair DarlingBrown has a PhD in History from the University of Edinburgh and spent his early career working as a lecturer at a further education college and a television journalist. He has been a Member of Parliament since 1983; first for Dunfermline East and since 2005 for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath.[5][6] As Prime Minister, he also held the offices of First Lord of the Treasury and the Minister for the Civil Service.The shuttering of the News of the World, the perpetrator of the most shocking privacy violations in a recent scandal enveloping the British media, has not ended the publicity disaster facing Rupert Murdoch's News International. Now other members of the British newspaper conglomerate, a wing of Murdoch's giant News Corp., are being accused of attempting to illegally obtain information about former prime minister Gordon Brown. Allegedly, tax paperwork obtained through a hack against his accountant's office was passed from News of the World to a sister paper. A worker for the Sunday Times once posed as Brown to get private information from his bank, and another scored files from his lawyers. And it has been known for some time now that medical records for his son, who suffers from cystic fibrosis, were also obtained and published by the London Sun.That's just part of today's ugly news for Murdoch: It was also reported that NotW tried to hack into the phones of 9/11 victims. And shareholders who filed an unrelated $675 million class-action suit against Murdoch back in March have updated their case to include news of the hacking scandal that shuttered NotW. In this week's Newsweek, journalist Carl Bernstein wonders if this ever-expanding scandal could be Rupert Murdoch's Watergate.So far Murdoch is still standing behind News International boss Rebekah Brooks, who headed up NotW during some of the worst of the alleged hacking incidents, and who was editor of the Sun when the Browns' medical records were published. As Bernstein notes, Murdoch is famous for protecting his own in exchange for tight-lipped loyalty. If he hangs Brooks out to dry and that protection comes into question, who knows what else might be revealed.
Election to parliament and opposition.
Gordon Brown was elected to Parliament on his second attempt as a Labour MP for Dunfermline East in 1983 general election. His first Westminster office mate was a newly elected MP from the Sedgefield constituency by the name of Tony Blair. Brown became opposition spokesman on Trade and Industry in 1985. In 1986, he published a biography of the Independent Labour Party politician James Maxton, the subject of his PhD thesis. Brown was Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 1987 to 1989 and then Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, before becoming Shadow Chancellor in 1992.Having led the Labour Movement Yes campaign, refusing to join the cross-party Yes for Scotland campaign, during the 1979 Scottish devolution referendum, while other senior Labour politicians — including Robin Cook, Tam Dalyell and Brian Wilson – campaigned for a No vote, Brown was subsequently a key participant in the Scottish Constitutional Convention, signing the Claim of Right for Scotland in 1989.
After the sudden death of Labour leader John Smith in May 1994, Brown did not contest the leadership after Tony Blair became favourite. It has long been rumoured a deal was struck between Blair and Brown at the former Granita restaurant in Islington, in which Blair promised to give Brown control of economic policy in return for Brown not standing against him in the leadership election.[ Whether this is true or not, the relationship between Blair and Brown has been central to the fortunes of "New Labour", and they have mostly remained united in public, despite reported serious private rifts.

Prime Minister.
Brown ceased to be Chancellor and became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 27 June 2007.Like all modern Prime Ministers, Brown concurrently served as the First Lord of the Treasury and the Minister for the Civil Service, and was a member of the Cabinet of the United Kingdom. Until his resignation from the post in May 2010 he was Leader of the Labour Party. He is Member of Parliament for the constituency of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. He is the sixth post-war prime minister, of a total of 12, to assume the role without having won a general election. Brown was the first prime minister from a Scottish constituency since the Conservative Sir Alec Douglas-Home in 1964. Not all British prime ministers have attended university, but of the ones that did Brown was one of only five that did not attend either Oxford or Cambridge, the others were, the Earl of Bute (Leiden), Lord John Russell (Edinburgh), Andrew Bonar Law (University of Glasgow), and Neville Chamberlain (Mason Science College, later Birmingham).[68] Brown proposed moving some traditional prime ministerial powers conferred by royal prerogative to the realm of Parliament, such as the power to declare war and approve appointments to senior positions. Brown wanted Parliament to gain the right to ratify treaties and have more oversight into the intelligence services. He also proposed moving some powers from Parliament to citizens, including the right to form "citizens' juries", easily petition Parliament for new laws, and rally outside Westminster. He asserted that the attorney general should not have the right to decide whether to prosecute in individual cases, such as in the loans for peerages scandal.[