It’s one thing dodging the great issues as Chancellor – but what happens when he’s Prime Minister, asks richard brooks
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As he enters the home stretch of his long journey to the Labour leadership, it's time to ask just how Gordon Brown will cope with the momentous issues that confront a prime minister. When the going gets tough, will he get going? If he's true to form he might just take Billy Ocean's words a little too literally and be nowhere to be seen.
Ever since hatching his legendary Granita deal with Tony Blair, Brown has known that in order to secure the promised top job he must safeguard his reputation at all costs. So, in nine years in government, whenever trouble has loomed he has stayed safely out of harm's way.
Flak-dodging became particularly important in Labour's second term as rebellions mounted. Brown's silence on Iraq was deafening. He was careful enough not to
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| Brown’s backers argue it makes sense for a leader-in-waiting to dodge the flak |
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associate himself with the contrived decision to invade, but not principled enough to risk his own future by opposing it and damaging the government. Eventually, of course, he meekly gave his support. Similar tactics could be seen in the Chancellor's reaction to university tuition fees. Although anathema to socialists of the sort Brown once was, the fees came in after he avoided any debate with rebels and again quietly acquiesced to Number 10.
When scandal flares senior ministers can generally be relied on to leap to their colleagues' defence. But not the Chancellor. As the 'triple whammy' of missing foreign prisoners, NHS financial woes and John Prescott's shenanigans dominated recent headlines, Brown skipped Westminster again.
Just a few weeks earlier he had been heavily criticised for fleeing the scene of an embarrassing by-election defeat in his own backyard of Dunfermline.
Some Brownites excuse this behaviour: it makes sense for a leader-in-waiting to ensure that as little mud as possible 
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