Ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown offered some insights into living in Number 10 and why it needs a facelift
Gordon Brown says Number 10 Downing Street will never be fully refurbished because no PM wants to vacate it for a long time – for fear they will be out before they get a chance to move back in.
Former Labour leader Brown, 74, was Prime Minister himself from 2007 to 2010 following on from Tony Blair’s reign in charge. He told how there are no full time chefs in the kitchen at Downing Street and other parts of the building are also in need of improvement.
Brown said: “I mean, look, when you go into Downing Street, it must have happened to Keir Starmer a few months ago. Someone comes from the civil service and says, Downing Street is in need of repair, it needs to be refurbished, can you approve this plan?
“Because it needs all this redecoration, refurbishment. It’s a very old building, as you know. And then you say, ‘well, how long is it going to take?’.
“And the guy said, well, you’ll have to be out of Downing Street for at least five years. And no prime minister is going to agree to that, are they? Because you don’t know if you’re even going to be prime minister.
“Liz Truss, she’d agreed to it. She was only there for a few days! But the idea that you come in as a prime minister, and the minute you’re in, you’re advised by the civil service that you’ve got to leave for five years, and you don’t know if you’ll ever be back.
“And in my case, I wouldn’t have been back, and you have to move to another building. So that’s why the refurbishment of Downing Street is never really going to happen.”
Speaking to Ruthie Rogers on her Table 4 podcast, Brown also reflected on his childhood in Scotland, growing up in poverty and surviving on porridge and omelettes during wartime shortages. He also told her about his first taste of alcohol as a teenager – which came whilst he was in hospital.
Brown was injured after being kicked in the head in a rugby scrum at school. As a result when he was at Edinburgh University he went blind in his left eye.
Speaking about his time in hospital around this period, Brown said: “At eight o’clock every evening, a trolley came round, and they offered you drinks.Alcoholic drinks. I was 16, and you would be offered Guinness, you’d be offered wine, you’d be offered lager, and you could take what you wanted.
“And this was my introduction into alcohol. I knew the health service was free, but free beer. And, so the food wasn’t so good, but the drink was quite enticing. So that’s my early years.”
