Graveyard slot: Brown makes Commons return
By Alex Stevenson and Ian Dunt
Gordon Brown has used his first backbench speech to defend Britain’s two aircraft carriers – denying his support for them was based on constituency grounds.
The former prime minister’s Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath seat is close to the Rosyth dockyard where maintenance and refits to the carriers will, local MPs hope, take place.
He used an adjournment debate by Thomas Docherty on the issue to raise his own concerns for the carriers, which he insisted had been backed by the coalition government for the right reasons.
“These are military decisions made on military advice for military reasons,” he told MPs. Conservative backbenchers who had gathered to hear their former nemesis speak responded with extended heckling.
Much of the ex-Labour leader’s speech was heard in respectful silence, however, after Mr Brown began by repeating his tributes to fallen soldiers.
“I think it is important we pay tribute to all those who are serving in Afghanistan,” he said, before noting fallen soldiers in the week before Armistice Day. “They will never be forgotten and their influence lives on,” he said.
Mr Brown had not spoken in the Commons since PMQs on April 7th. Since departing Downing Street his only public speech came during the Labour ceremony to announce the party’s new leader, in which Mr Brown made sure he was present to ‘pass on the baton’.
He chose to make his comeback at around 22:20 BST on Monday night, in his first contribution in the Commons chamber since being re-elected as a Labour MP on May 6th.
The former prime minister has not enjoyed good press since he left Downing Street in the wake of successful negotiations between Nick Clegg and David Cameron to form a coalition government.
Tony Blair’s memoir portrayed him as an eccentric and scheming individual with no emotional intelligence, while the coalition government has tried to pin the blame for the recession on his shoulders.
But Mr Brown has stayed quiet throughout, telling his remaining allies in the party not to return fire after the publication of the Blair memoirs.
Mr Brown has returned to the Commons on several occasions but today was the first time he has spoken since becoming a backbencher again.
