Curtains for Gordon:
Is this the end for Tony?
Countless hours of planning - if not plotting - are over. Gordon
Brown, it seems, has not just measured the curtains at No 10 Downing
Street metaphorically. They have been ordered and delivered.
Indeed Mr Brown is actually preparing to move into No 10, and not on
May 4 or May 31, but possibly much sooner. After years living away from
the upstairs No 10 flat handed him by Mr Blair back in 1997, the
chancellor has decided that now his family has expanded it is the time
to move in properly.
He is taking his wife, Sarah, son John, baby Fraser and a pile of
Postman Pat and Thomas the Tank Engine videos into the No 10 apartment
previously occupied by John Major and Lady Thatcher. He has also been
advised by security officials that it would be easier to protect the
family inside one residence at No 10.
Where to reside?
The move has not involved any discussions between the two families
about the proper boundaries between Nos 10 and 11.
The chancellor wants more living space, finding the relatively poky
No 10 flat too small for his expanding needs and will reclaim some
office space to do so.
There is no question of him annexing any of the rooms occupied by the
Blairs in the No 11 flat even though with the Blair family starting to
flee the nest for the wider world, the chancellor's own expanding and
younger family need the space
Cherie Blair is not delighted. The nadir came when she was apparently
told by an aide last week that the curtains had arrived. She asked:
"What curtains? I have ordered no curtains."
She hadn't. They had come for the Browns; they had been inadvertently
sent to the wrong address.
It is galling enough for Mrs Blair to see headlines about her husband
screaming: "It's curtains for Blair", only to find the same measured
curtains being delivered for the Browns.
Some might say it is a sign of presumption that Mr Brown should be
moving into No 10 even before a leadership contest has been called, let
alone a vote cast. It is taking the stable and orderly transition to a
new level. But as with everything in the Brown-Blair rivalry, not
everything is as it seems in this row. The drapes of wrath have a
history.
Flat to fit a family
Back in 1997, Mr Blair, resplendent with a massive majority and a
large family, decided that he would like to live above the shop. His
counterpart, Gordon Brown, was unmarried at the time of taking up his
post as chancellor.
The two agreed that Mr Blair would take over the larger No 11 flat,
traditionally the home of the chancellor, and Mr Brown occupy the No 10
flat with economic texts and pizza for company. So No 10 continued to be
the prime minister's official residence and contained the prime
ministerial offices, but Mr Blair and his family actually lived in No
11.After Mr Brown married and the Blairs had their fourth child, the
chancellor moved out to his own private flat nearby and and used the
space mainly in the day time.
In reality, two and a half centuries of use as government residences
has led to so much interlinking between the two houses that it can be
hard to know where the boundary of one ends and the other begins.
The walls between not only the houses in Downing Street, but also the
adjacent houses behind them on Horseguards Parade, have been knocked
through. So now as Mr Brown prepares to re-enter No 10 - or at least the
flat above - expect the police to be called to a domestic at any moment.
The only alternative may be a partition using some of the redundant
masonry from the Berlin Wall. Either way, there goes the neighbourhood.
(The Guardian)
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