It may have inadvertently fallen victim to unfortunate timing, given the row over the Foreign Office’s Pope memo, but Gordon Brown gives a rare insight into his deepest values in today’s Independent on Sunday interview with Jane Merrick and John Rentoul.
At last addressing head-on the important and underemphasised issue of the Tories’ proposed inheritence-tax cut for the country’s richest, Brown says:
How can it be a priority to give to people who have already got so much? It’s not “God helps people who help themselves”, it’s “God helps people whom He has already helped”. That’s what their [the Conservatives’] motto is.
This is interesting, partly because Labour has seemed bizarrely reluctant to focus on this crucial dividing line, but also because it tells you a little about what makes this mysterious man tick.
It is often (wrongly) said that Tony Blair didn’t “do” God while in office; in fact he often discussed his faith, even if only to say that it made him look like a “nutter”.
Brown, a very different personality, certainly is more private. Yet this is the son of the manse who was in tears as he gave the Pope a book of his father’s sermons, and he is, for better or worse, religious.
As the final days of this campaign approach, and Labour hopes the media and voters focus on the economy, values and the fiscal differences they create between the parties, Brown may have to open up even more, and tell the world why he wants a mandate to remain Prime Minister.
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