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- guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 April 2010 15.51 BST
Does this engine remind you of anyone? Photograph: PR
Grumpy, morose, given to bursts of ill-temper, uncomfortable with owning up when he has made a mistake – that remains the prevalent image of Gordon Brown. Based on what, exactly? On day-to-day observation on television, on what the papers report, on books featuring sulphurous bust-ups with colleagues? Or could there be a more subtle, insidious, influence here?
I was recently handed, and pestered to read, a little book simply entitled "Gordon". The person who asked me to read it can be acquitted of seeking to influence my vote, as he is only four. Yet I found the contents unexpectedly topical. "This", it begins, "is a story about Gordon the Big Engine. He was a very proud engine who always thought he knew best. But then one day something happened to make him realise otherwise ..."
Gordon, the narrator explains, was always boasting, and telling the other engines how to behave. "One day, he was showing off to Edward. 'You watch me this afternoon as I rush through with the Express.'" But hubris, as in all the best moral tales, is rewarded with nemesis. Gordon cannot alone get up the hill. He blames, not his own imperfections, but coal trucks holding him back. Eventually, he has to be rescued by Edward.
This book, a remodelled version of an original story by the Reverend W Awdry, simplifies and sharpens up the characters of Gordon, Edward and the rest of the engine shed. Its more authentic predecessors have been read by parents to children over and over again in the past 65 years. Indeed, since we are told that Gordon Brown as a child was hooked on them, they might even have shaped his self-image.
In a second, older, more originally Awdry book I was also invited to read, the picture of Gordon as bossy, impatient, rude, overbearing and boastful is consistently drummed into impressionable ears. "One of the engines in Edward's shed was called Gordon," we are told. "He was very big and very proud." "Gordon was cross and didn't care what he did. 'I'll show them, I'll show them,' he hissed." "'I never boast'", Gordon continued modestly, "but 100 miles an hour would be easy for me." And again: "A fine strong engine like me has something to talk about. I'm the only engine that can pull the Express. "(So much, I thought as I read, for Nick the usurper engine and Dave the Bullingdon engine!) "When I'm not there, they need two engines. Think of that! I've pulled expresses for years, and have never once lost my way. I seem to know the right line by instinct".
There's a decided tinge of what one might call Stakhanovite son-of the-manse.
"'Well, little Thomas,' chuckled Gordon as he passed, 'you now know what hard work means, don't you'." "'Cheer up, Gordon!' said the Fat Controller. 'I can't, Sir. The others say I've got boiler-ache, but I haven't. I keep thinking about the Dreadful State of the World.'"
This haunting identification with Labour's leader is underlined by information which seems on the surface quite incidental. Gordon, we're told, has a history of burst safety valves. A dispute arises between the engines as to whether "London" means Euston or Paddington. Gordon, as you'd expect in one who comes from Kirkcaldy, insists that it means King's Cross. Then there's the role of Edward, coming to Gordon's rescue at difficult moments.
"'I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it,' puffed Gordon.' I will do it, I will do it, I will do it' puffed Edward ... Edward pushed and puffed and puffed and pushed, as hard as ever he could, and almost before he realised it, Gordon found himself at the top of the hill. 'I've done it! I've done it! I've done it!' he said proudly, and forgot all about Edward pushing behind."
Wise editors may, one suspects, have declined, in view of the youth of their target audience, to give Edward the surname Balls.
Since the Reverend Wilbert Awdry died in March 1997, six weeks before the Labour electoral triumph that installed the big engine at the Treasury, one has to assume this portrait of Gordon belongs to the world of prophecy, rather than to that of political propaganda. Which makes one wonder whether other appropriate, still unpublished, stories may lurk in the Awdry archive. One, perhaps, about a shiny new engine that bursts unexpectedly out of a minor engine shed and races if not to the front of the field, then from Gordon's viewpoint, disturbingly close to it. If the engine's called Nick, that would clinch it.
Staff
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