Poor Gordon. Poor Emily

Finally, it happened. As we have reported so many times in the past, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been compared to Heathcliff, to St. John Rivers... even to Bertha Mason. Now the British media are reporting that he has compared himself to Emily Brontë's (anti)hero. It all comes from an interview in the New Statesman:

Heathcliff? Absolutely

Most observers agree the Prime Minister has improved at the despatch box after being mauled by David Cameron early on. But Brown remains an unsympathetic figure in the eyes of the electorate. His advisers may have tried to turn his brooding seriousness into an electoral asset, but they must secretly hope he would share more private moments with the public, which seems to have decided that he lacks warmth.

There is a human side to Gordon. He may be uncomfortable talking about himself, but on the train home our conversation is punctuated with laughter, and most of it is neither nervous nor insincere.

Is he a romantic? I ask. "Ask Sarah," he chuckles. Some women say you remind them of Heathcliff, I suggest. Brown is, after all, brooding and intense. "Absolutely correct," he jokes. "Well, maybe an older Heathcliff, a wiser Heathcliff." (Gloria di Piero)

Check the British media tsunami that this (innocent) joke has caused.

BBC News asks Ann Dinsdale about it and reports a session of the House of Commons full of Brontë references:

He said unlike Heathcliff, he did not "generally" lose his temper. But Bronte expert Ann Dinsdale said the character was actually "not an ideal role-model".
In Wuthering Heights, published in 1847, Heathcliff is an embittered, violent figure who treats most others with cruelty and contempt and who may have been a killer.
Ms Dinsdale, collections manager of the Bronte Parsonage Museum at Haworth, West Yorkshire, told the BBC: "The thing about Heathcliff is he turned to domestic abuse, possibly committed murder and certainly dug up the remains of his dead lover.
"Is this the role model we want for our own prime minister?
"There's this romanticised gloss that's come from film versions of Heathcliff. When you look at the books he's not an ideal role model."
Elsewhere in the interview Mr Brown laughed off suggestions he had a bad temper saying: "When you've got difficult decisions to make, you've got to be calm and considered. I don't generally lose my temper."
Mr Brown did not have to wait long to hear reference to Heathcliff in the House of Commons (...)
Shadow Chancellor George Osborne called for an early U-turn on car tax plans, adding that it was time for "Heathcliff to come down from dithering heights". (Click here to watch the moment)
Conservative leader David Cameron, responding to Mr Brown's statement on the G8 summit, said: "I am sure I speak for the whole country when I say I am pleased to see Heathcliff come home."
And Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg also got in on the act, urging Mr Brown not to allow the G8 as an institution to "die a death like Heathcliff, a man ranting and raving about a world he could no longer understand or change".

ITN News gives more details of the House of Commons's session quoting directly from Brontë Parsonage Museum's acting director, Andrew McCarthy:

But Conservative MPs in the House of Commons pointed out the literary figure was prone to "domestic violence, kidnapping and possibly murder".
Shadow Commons leader Theresa May demanded the Prime Minister make a statement to MPs about which of Heathcliff's darker characteristics matched his own after a Bronte expert questioned the Premier's choice.
She quoted the expert, who highlighted Heathcliff's actions in digging up his dead lover and his cruelty to animals.
Ms May asked: "I imagine that most people would be disturbed by this comparison as indeed was Andrew McCarthy of the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Yorkshire who explained that 'Heathcliff is a man prone to domestic violence, kidnapping, possibly murder and digging up his dead lover. He is moody and unkind to animals.'
"Can the Prime Minister make a statement explaining which of these characteristics is most like him?"
But Ms Harman refused to rise to the challenge and did not answer the question from Ms May.

The BBC News Magazine asks:

Which Wuthering Heights's character are you?:

If Gordon Brown thinks he is Heathcliff, then who is his Cathy? A tormented ghost, tapping on a storm-lashed window, pleading to be let in. One hopes, for Sarah Brown's sake, that she hasn't cast herself in this role. Ditto his deputy PM, Harriet Harman.
Commentators have long likened the Prime Minister to Emily Bronte's anti-hero, but for the first time he has agreed with the comparison in an interview with New Statesman magazine.
For fiction allows us to try someone else's life on for size. And sometimes the fit is all too comfortable.
"It seems as if he is floundering and is grabbing onto a strong, granite-jawed character that someone's suggested to him," says psychologist Angela Mansi, of Westminster Business School.
"People like to identify themselves with a character when they lack a sense of their core identity. This is happening more and more as we give too much away about ourselves and try too hard to
please others." (...)
Perhaps it is the rather more sympathetic film version of Heathcliff that Mr Brown is thinking of - Timothy Dalton, perhaps, or Richard Burton - rather than the unpleasant piece of work in the novel. Or he is a fan of Kate Bush's passionate pleadings. (Megan Lane)

The Telegraph reports more political reactions to his comment:

The Prime Minister likened himself to Bronte's dark, brooding vengeful character who died a broken man haunted by the ghost of his former lover whose body he exhumed twice.
The comparison was made in an interview in New Statesman magazine which was designed to soften the image of Mr Brown.
But the remarks, which come only days after Mr Brown was ridiculed for suggesting people throw out too much food, have been mocked by his political opponents and have dismayed Labour MPs as they have uncomfortable echoes of Mr Brown's own political plight.
Allies of Tony Blair have claimed that Mr Brown is "psychologically flawed", living a "Shakespearian tragedy", and obsessed with the legacy of his predecessor.
However, in the interview, Mr Brown says it is "absolutely correct" for people to compare him to Heathcliff. He then adds: "Well, maybe an older Heathcliff, a wiser Heathcliff." Many MPs were openly questioning last night whether Mr Brown could have even read the book to make such a comparison.
Andrew McCarthy, the acting director of the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Yorkshire, told The Daily Telegraph: "Heathcliff is a man prone to domestic violence, kidnapping, possibly murder, and digging up his dead lover. He is moody and unkind to animals. Is this really a good role model for a prime minister?"
Chris Grayling the Conservative shadow cabinet minister, said: "You really have the impression now that Gordon Brown is wrapped up in the his own little world.
"It is clear that he and his ministers have been in power too long, they are out of touch, and frankly are increasingly deluded about the way that people see them. It clear we now desperately need a change."
Vince Cable, the Lib Dem treasury spokesman who memorably said that Mr Brown had been transformed from "Stalin to Mr Bean'' when he was the acting party leader, said: "I don't think Gordon can have read the book.
"Heathcliff may be dark and brooding but he is also ruthless and vindictive. He ended his life a broken and tormented man haunted by a ghost. Tony Blair perhaps?"
The novel, which draws its name from the Yorkshire manor on the moors on which the story centres, is the tale of the all-consuming, passionate, yet thwarted, love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. Their unresolved passion eventually destroys them and many around them.
At Westminster even loyal Labour MPs said that people would be able to draw comparisons between the doomed romantic relationship and the feud between supporters of Mr Brown and Mr Blair. In the cinema Heathcliff has been played by Sir Laurence Olivier, Ralph Fiennes, and Timothy Dalton a former James Bond. One Labour MP, who declined to be named, said: "I can't see which one of those Gordon most resembles." (Andrew Pierce and Robert Winnett)

And even asks their readers about it :

Is Gordon Brown right to regard himself as being like Heathcliff? What qualities do they have in common? Does his choice of literary character show him to be hopelessly out of touch with the rest of the world?

The Guardian does the same and some of the comments suggest other Brontë characters more suitable:

If Broon wants to be a Bronte character, then surely the one that fits him best is Brocklehurst, the infamous "Black marble clergyman". After all, both of them share a taste for punitive rules and starving the poor... (Henuttawy)
Actually, Broon might do better to compare himself to Branwell Bronte, who also never really succeeded at anything, and who eventually came to a very Bad End. (Henuttawy)
If he must choose a character from the Bronte novels who better than the mad person in the attic who after several attempts finally succeeds in burning the house down.(nidnad)

The Daily Mail has some more reactions:

Gordon Brown last night likened himself to literature's most tortured antihero as he insisted he has no intention of resigning as Prime Minister. (...)
His remarks are likely to be seized upon by his political opponents.
The Prime Minister has been likened to Heathcliff before by commentators, but has never agreed with the comparison himself.
In Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff ends up a broken, tormented man haunted by the ghost of his lover Catherine.
Last night Tory frontbencher Chris Grayling said: 'If Gordon Brown is a brooding, romantic hero, then I am a sex god.
'Nobody thinks he is a character in Wuthering Heights. They think he's the author of Hard Times.'
Others in Westminster were speculating that in likening himself to Heathcliff, Mr Brown may have been making a coded reference to the fact he felt himself a victim of Tony Blair's legacy - haunted by the ghost of the former Premier's policies in the way Heathcliff was haunted by the ghost of Catherine. (...)
Last night as he flew back to Britain with a Press contingent who made his party aware of the stir his 'Heathcliff' comments would cause, his aides stressed that his remarks had been intended purely as a joke. (James Chapman)

The Herald:

Brooding, intense, distant but passionate about what he believes in - these are the facets of Gordon Brown's personality which he would like the world to see and which he believes he shares with Emily Bronte's romantic hero, Heathcliff. (Torcuil Crichton)

The Independent:

The Prime Minister is normally at pains to avoid being compared with other figures but his guard dropped in an interview with New Statesman, published today, in which the interviewer, Gloria De Piero, suggested to Mr Brown that many women viewed him as a Heathcliff-like figure.
Given that the character is famed for his vindictive side, the Prime Minister might have been expected to recoil in horror at such a comparison. But no. "Absolutely correct," he replied, before adding: "Well, maybe an older Heathcliff, a wiser Heathcliff."
Perhaps it is the character's passion that Mr Brown associates with. (Andrew Grice)

The Scotsman:

COMMENTATORS have long been fond of likening Gordon Brown to the stormy, brooding character of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights.
And it seems that is also how the Prime Minister sees himself. (...)
Mr Brown's aides went out of their way to cultivate the image of a wild, untamed man along the lines of Emily Brontë's romantic anti-hero during his early years in No11. However, with the passing of time, his marriage and increasing sniping over his grumpiness and personal skills, they stopped playing up the similarities.(...)
The resurfacing of the Heathcliff comparison could be seized on as significant by Mr Brown's opponents. In the novel, the character dies a bitter, tormented man, haunted by the ghost of his departed partner.

The Times:

He has been compared to Stalin, Mr Bean and a Shakespearian tragedy. But Gordon Brown has at last settled on a comparison he is happy with: Heathcliff.
Emily Brontë’s brooding anti-hero has come to personify the wild depths of romantic passion, and the Prime Minister, who built a reputation with prudence as a watchword, has settled on the Wuthering Heights character as a kindred spirit.(...)
Mr Brown’s readiness to see himself as the ultimately tragic figure whose all-consuming and thwarted desire for Catherine Earnshaw destroyed him gives a rare human glimpse of himself that his strategists have been privately hoping he would show occasionally.(...) (Philip Webster)

The Guardian (which even traces a profile of the Heathcliff character)

Of all the great literary figures Gordon Brown could have likened himself to, Emily Brontë's flawed anti-hero Heathcliff was at best a questionable choice. (Patrick Wintour and Sarah Knapton)

Kathryn Hugues in The Guardian's Books Blog is a little more perceptive:

That Gordon Brown should choose to be remembered as a hero from a book published over a hundred and fifty years ago is not perhaps surprising. Wuthering Heights is exactly the kind of classic English (for which read 'British') text around which he wishes us all to rally. No trendy postcolonial literature for him, even though it might be more in tune with our current preoccupations.
Still, one wonders, has Brown actually read the book recently? If he had then he'd know that Heathcliff is actually a half-savage Gypsy boy who skulks around the Yorkshire moors in the freezing cold, sleeps in stables and drives the woman who loves him to an early grave. He is mostly a hair-trigger away from violence and can be guaranteed to lash out with his fists if anyone so much as gives him a funny look. Oh, and he also speaks in such an impenetrable dialect that it's all but impossible to know what he's going on about.
By choosing to identify with Heathcliff, Brown is of course carefully choosing someone we've all heard of. When the BBC ran its Big Read initiative a few years ago to find the nation's favourite 100 books of all time, Emily Brontë's novel came in at number 12. But not long after the results were announced, people started coming out of the closet and admitting that, actually, they hadn't read the book, or at least not since they were forced to sit through it at school 25 years ago.
What many of those who voted for Wuthering Heights in the poll were actually thinking of was the 1939 film adaptation, with Laurence Olivier playing Heathcliff in best matinee idol style. He even had one of those little 'tashes, which made him look more like Ronald Coleman than a feral farm labourer. The closest this Heathcliff ever got to violence was squeezing Merle Oberon, playing opposite him as Cathy, just a wee bit tightly to his manly chest.
Surely this must be the Heathcliff Brown is thinking of when he blushingly declares that he doesn't mind the comparison. His qualification of "well, maybe an older Heathcliff, a wiser Heathcliff" reveals his confusion. The Heathcliff who returns halfway through the book is even nastier than before, intent on wreaking revenge on absolutely everyone who previously crossed him, more Arnold Schwarzenegger than Laurence Olivier. Perhaps it's just too much to ask that a politician should pay attention to anything between hard covers.

More from The Mirror, Peter Walker in The Guardian's News blog or Bill Blanko in his The Guardian column, Financial Times, Channel 4...

Michael White in The Guardian's politics blog summarizes briefly what we think about all this:

Up popped the station's political correspondent, Gloria de Piero, cheerful as always, standing in front of No 10 explaining to the viewers that she did the NS interview. "It was a joke," she said. Brown was laughing when he said it.

Gosh. As one who occasionally calls our brooding PM the "Heathcliff of the Heather", I'm glad we got that over and done with. But Gloria's shock revelation - Brown in joke - has come too late. It's all over the papers and on TV.

It is often unwise to make jokes in politics, especially if you lack a deft touch - as GB does.

Journalists and colleagues, all of whom weren't present, deliberately wrench a careless remark from context, overinterpret its deeper meaning, or suffer a collective sense of humour failure.

There is evidence of all three this morning. Brontë experts have been wheeled on to point out that Emily's anti-hero was a sinister, even murderous piece of work, which is certainly how he struck me when I finally read the novel last year. And, of course, everyone dies all over the place, which is how the economy feels this week.

Bald Tory frontbencher Chris Grayling, who never gives up, is quoted to the effect of "not Wuthering Heights, more Hard Times". And "if Brown is a brooding romantic hero, then I am a sex god". Ho ho.

But the funniest development is what we used to call the Raj Persaud approach before Dr Raj's (temporary) fall from grace - psychobabble. The ghost which haunts Brown is not Cathy Earnshaw, but Tony Blair. Geddit? (...)

That's why they're talking about it today - even though it's trivia and that Heathcliff joke may have backfired. A researcher at Tory HQ is probably speed-reading Ms Brontë's classic for further mischief even as we speak. What a homecoming after a 14-hour flight from the G8 summit.

Poor Gordon. Poor Emily.

Categories: In the News, Weirdo