It is policies, not personalities we want

By Sarah Crompton Published: 7:00AM GMT 13 Feb 2010

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Gordon Brown during his interview with Piers Morgan Photo: ITV

The day that Gordon Brown"s daughter Jennifer Jane was born produced an unforgettable image of a man who, in his late forties, had discovered total joy and contentment in the promise of family life. As the then Chancellor chatted to reporters on the steps of the hospital, he was relaxed, charming and happy. She was "the most beautiful baby in the world," he declared, with uncharacteristic lack of inhibition.

The contrast between that and his ashen, frozen face 10 days later as he left the hospital after the tiny, premature baby had died following a brain haemorrhage was so acute, so bleak and shocking as to be almost unbearable.

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Here was a man who had hoped and lost; who had suffered the worst thing that can ever befall a parent. People really did mourn, sad for his loss, and admiring of the dignity with which he bore it.

That people are seriously asking, eight years later, whether showing emotion about that death, in a television interview this weekend, is a display of real feeling or just a cynical pre-election ploy, is a sign of how far his reputation has declined in the intervening time or perhaps how very low our political discourse has fallen.

The barely held-back tears come, almost inevitably, in an interview with Brown"s old mate Piers Morgan, in an encounter to be shown on ITV this Sunday. The reduction of his interviewees to quivering wrecks seems to be Morgan"s new stock-in-trade. Cilla Black, Danni Minogue, and even Katie Price have all been left sniffing and sobbing by his peculiar combination of intrusive and ingratiating questioning.

That Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister let us not forget, thinks a chat show of this sort is a suitable place to share any kind of confidence is a depressing sign of the times. But he has no doubt been advised by those wise counsellors Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson that if he is to have any chance of winning the next election, then he has to counter the tsunami of negative publicity that seems endlessly to break around his character and his "psychological flaws" by revealing his human and lovable side. And that strategy entails a trip to the bright lights of the television studio and the ritualised laying out of private linen in a public place.

In fairness to the Prime Minister, I am writing this before actually seeing the interview. But it has been so endlessly trailed, puffed and hyped in ITV"s search for ratings, that I feel I have heard, read and glimpsed enough to say that I think he appears to conduct himself with some dignity. You can hear the lines that he feels he has to punch home "Sarah and I, we"re a very modern love story" but I like the smile in his voice and the faint hint of impatience when Morgan presses him over and over again on the circumstances of his proposal.

And when he talks about Jennifer Jane, only the most frozen-hearted cynic could doubt that he is not absolutely genuine. He is honest, direct and pretty heart-breaking. His descriptions of what it is to lose a child, and of what it is like to live with another with a serious illness, will undoubtedly touch a chord with parents everywhere.

But the naked logic of his reasons for such revelations are laid bare by Sarah Brown, who confided to a forum on Mumsnet yesterday: "I am very proud of Gordon for doing a gruelling interview... and I"m glad that other people will finally get a chance to see the passionate and caring man that I know and love. Do watch on Sunday night and decide for yourself, but I hope you will see that we are just ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances."

It was Mumsnet, an online discussion group for parents, you will recall, that caused a political storm at the end of last year when Gordon refused to reveal which was his favourite biscuit in one of its forums; it is Mumsnet on which David Cameron and Nick Clegg have also taken part in online debates. The impulse for all this activity is the one that prompts revelations on Piers Morgan: to appeal to women voters by showing that he is a man that we can relate to.

What a terribly reductive calculation that is! As if women are the only group of voters who are going to say: "Aaah. He"s had a hard time. He deserves to be Prime Minister again." It is patent rubbish. One mother on Mumsnet hit the nail on the head when, in a discussion of Brown"s TV interview, she said: "How could you not feel sorry for him? But it doesn"t mean you have to vote for him."

It is one of the saddest coincidences of the current political scene that the leaders of both the Conservative and Labour parties have suffered the tragedy of the death of a child. That experience may or may not make them better men; but it is almost entirely irrelevant to judging them as politicians.

Indeed, it has been one of the major criticisms of David Cameron"s public strategy that he has so consistently positioned himself as a caring, family man, making it seem that his family are his policy or rather that you should vote for him because he is a nice dad and a loving husband, rather than because he has any substantial policies that might actually improve life in this country.

Gordon Brown has stood apart from such a stance. He seemed to take a side-swipe at Cameron when he told the Labour party conference in Manchester in September 2008 that "my children aren"t props; they"re people." In the same speech he also asserted: "I didn"t come into politics to be a celebrity or thinking I"d always be popular."

When he said that it seemed refreshing, a welcome change from the laid-back charm with which Tony Blair concealed his ruthless manipulation of power. Yet here is Brown in the celebrity"s chair, attempting his own brand of salesmanship just 12 weeks before the general election. Does he think that voters can"t see through such timing? Do his advisers really believe that the honesty of the feelings expressed can somehow compensate for the sense of being manipulated?

I don"t yet know how I am going to vote in a general election. But I do know that I feel a rising sense of contempt for the political classes when they operate on the belief that women voters are there to be hoodwinked and that nobody cares about policies any more it is just the personalities that count.

That may just about be true if you are voting for a contestant in Britains Got Talent, but it is absolutely not and never will be the case when it comes to a vote which will condition how you live your life for the next five years. Like most mums, most women, and indeed most men, when I step into the polling booth I am going to put my mark against the name that is most likely to respect and nurture the things I want for my country. It wont have anything at all to do with whether I like the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition, or anyone else. It wont be to do with revealing TV interviews or airbrushed posters.

It will be about policies not about personalities. It will be about safeguarding a better future for my children. And the sooner Gordon Brown, Alastair Campbell, David Cameron and everyone else start to realise that, the sooner the standard of political debate in this country will rise above banal slogans and tear-jerking interviews and actually start to mean something.

* Celia Walden was present at the recording of Gordon Browns revealing interview with Piers Morgan on February 6. Here, she reveals how the studio audience reacted

The interview got off to an awkward start. As Gordon Brown attempted to joke his way out of answering some of Piers Morgans more flippant questions, we, in the audience, could see the PM trying to relax and failing.

There were titters at his discomfort but they ceased abruptly when the interrogation started in earnest, and Brown began with surprising candour to answer questions about his relationship with Tony Blair, the Granita deal, and that infamous temper.

It was when the Prime Minister admitted to making mistakes and lamented his own failure to connect with the public that there was a subtle shift in the atmosphere: people were warming to him.

An hour and a half in, when a video of his brother, John, and wife Sarah talking about baby Jennifer was shown, we watched in astonishment as his face crumbled. He tried hard not to cry, but when he began to talk haltingly of his daughters last moments, many of the female audience members were in tears well before he was.

Sarah, meanwhile, was crying silently in the front row elegant, somehow, even in grief.

Later, when the mood was lightened by Morgans probing about the couples engagement, there was no doubt that the audience were now on Browns side, laughing along with him. The interview was a risk for the PM, but by the time Brown left the studio that day, the general sense was that it had been one worth taking.