Gordon Brown
James Gordon Brown (born 20 February 1951) is a British Labour politician, who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party between 2007 and 2010. Brown became Prime Minister 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 under Tony Blair. His tenure ended in May 2010, when he officially resigned as Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party.
Brown has a PhD in History from the University of Edinburgh and spent his early career working as a television journalist.[1][2] He has been a Member of Parliament since 1983; first for Dunfermline East and since 2005 for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath all in Scotland.[3][4] As Prime Minister, he also held the officed of First Lord of the Treasury and the Minister for the Civil Service.
Brown's time as Chancellor was marked by major reform of Britain's monetary and fiscal policy architecture, transferring interest rate setting powers to the Bank of England, by a wide extension of the powers of the Treasury to cover much domestic policy and by transferring responsibility for banking supervision to the Financial Services Authority.[5] Controversial moves included the abolition of advance corporation tax (ACT) relief in his first budget,[6][7] and the removal in his final budget of the 10% "starting rate" of personal income tax which he had introduced in 1999.[8]
After initial rises in opinion polls,[9] Labour performed poorly in local and European election results in 2009.[10][11] A year later, Labour achieved the second highest number of seats in the House of Commons at the 2010 general election but lost 91 seats, which resulted in a hung parliament.[12][13] On 10 May 2010, Brown announced he would stand down as leader of the Labour Party, and instructed the party to put into motion the processes to elect a new leader. On 11 May 2010, Brown officially resigned as Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party. He was succeeded by David Cameron.[14]
See also
References
- ↑ Kearney, Martha (14 March 2005). "Brown seeks out 'British values'". BBC News (BBC). http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4347369.stm. Retrieved 23 January 2008.
- ↑ "The Gordon Brown story". BBC News (BBC). 27 June 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6743875.stm. Retrieved 11 July 2009.
- ↑ "Brown is UK's new prime minister". BBC News (BBC). 27 June 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6245682.stm. Retrieved 23 January 2008.
- ↑ "Gordon Brown". BBC News (BBC). 19 November 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/mpdb/html/712.stm. Retrieved 23 January 2008.
- ↑ Memorandum of Understanding between HM Treasury, the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority. HM Treasury, Bank of England, FSA (1997). Retrieved on 16 July 2009.
- ↑ Halligan, Liam (16 October 2006). "Brown's raid on pensions costs Britain £100 billion". Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1531448/Brown's-raid-on-pensions-costs-Britain-andpound100-billion.html. Retrieved 27 February 2009.
- ↑ Stewart, Heather (22 July 2002). "Pension blame falls on Brown". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2002/jul/22/money.politics. Retrieved 4 August 2008.
- ↑ Dawar, Anil (21 April 2008). "Q&A: 10p tax rate cut". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/apr/21/economy.labour. Retrieved 4 August 2008.
- ↑ New British PM gives party biggest poll lead in two years. The Philippine Star.
- ↑ "Labour suffers wipeout in its worst local election results". The Times. 6 June 2009. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6440935.ece. Retrieved 21 June 2009.
- ↑ Labour slumps to historic defeat, BBC News, 8 June 2009
- ↑ General Election 2010 - Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath BBC News
- ↑ Election 2010: First hung parliament in UK for decades BBC News, 7 May 2010
- ↑ Gordon Brown resigns as UK prime minister, BBC, May 11, 2010.
