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Cristina Odone

Cristina Odone is a journalist, novelist and broadcaster specialising in the relationship between society, families and faith. She is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies and is a former editor of the Catholic Herald and deputy editor of the New Statesman. She is married and lives in west London with her husband, two stepsons and a daughter. Her latest novel, The Good Divorce Guide, is published by Harper Collins.

When   Frank   Field   talked,   Gordon   Brown   stuck   his    f ingers   in   his   ears   and   whimpered

 

By Cristina Odone Politics Last updated: May 19th, 2010

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I have a revealing little story about Frank Field and Gordon Brown. There are many good things about Field – appointed “poverty tsar” by David Cameron – and the fact that Brown loathes him is one of them.

The Birkenhead MP is socially conservative, like the majority of his working-class Birkenhead constituency. He recognised, way before it was fashionable to do so, the importance of the strong family unit, and he hates state dependence because it ultimately humiliates. It was Field who first warned about our worrying demographics and told Blair that people were growing wary of the ever-expanding state.

This kind of talk was way beyond the pale for Gordon Brown who, as Chancellor in 1997, couldn’t bear the kind of schemes Field, then Minister of Welfare Reform, came up with. Field once told me how Brown would never agree to a meeting, always charging his aides to keep him at bay. One day, though, fate intervened.

A fire alarm went off at Number 11, and Field, shrewdly guessing that the Chancellor would ignore it to press on with work at his desk, boldly stepped inside Brown’s office. Field began to articulate his vision, but before he could plead for the funds to implement it, Brown stuck his fingers in his ears, shook his head vehemently, and whimpered.

No wonder Field was fired soon after. He later, publicly, compared Brown to Mrs Rochester, ranting and raving in the attic. No wonder.