Old Newscast, 2010 Election: Brown vs Cameron vs Clegg (Part 1)

Summary

Newscast – Old Newscast: 2010 Election, Brown vs Cameron vs Clegg (Part 1)

Date: August 8, 2026
Host: Adam Fleming
Guests: Joe Coburn (BBC Politics journalist), Nick Robinson (BBC Political Editor)
Length: approx. 30 minutes

Overview: Revisiting the 2010 General Election

This episode kicks off a retrospective miniseries exploring pivotal UK elections between 1996–2016, focusing on the dramatic contest of 2010: Gordon Brown (Labour), David Cameron (Conservatives), and Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrats). With political correspondents who reported at the time, the podcast digs into the buildup, the defining events, and the shifting mood in British politics, setting the stage for the official campaign.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Prequel to 2010: The Near-Miss Election of 2007

• Gordon Brown’s Succession of Tony Blair
  • Brown’s ascent had been anticipated for years.
  • He enjoyed a honeymoon period marked by a sense of relief both in Labour and the country after Blair (04:29, Nick Robinson).
• Expectations of a Snap Election
  • Serious preparations were made for a 2007 contest, but Brown ultimately pulled back (“bottled it”), damaging his image as decisive (05:44, Joe Coburn).
  • The Conservative party cleverly capitalized by announcing a popular inheritance tax policy, shifting the public mood (06:35, Joe Coburn).
  • “He marched everyone to the top of the hill…then he bottled it.” (05:44, Joe Coburn)

2. The Shadow of indecision and Political Manipulation

• The narrative of Brown wavering grew, which Cameron would exploit: “He’s the first Prime Minister to have bottled an election because he thought he was going to win.” (09:56, Joe Coburn recalling Cameron’s line)
• Nick Robinson recounts the media’s obsession with whether Brown would call an early election, culminating in a tense interview where Brown was “furious” and suspicious of leaks (09:29, Nick Robinson).

3. The 2008 Financial Crisis: Both a Test and an Opportunity

• Brown's Economic Competence vs Public Discontent
  • Brown’s and Darling's handling of the banking crisis—especially the recapitalization plan—became internationally influential (11:01, Joe Coburn).
  • However, the public's anxiety about economic stability, lost trust in banking, and government performance lingered (14:02, Nick Robinson).
  • “There was a terror people faced when told you might not get your money out of the bank when Northern Rock crashed.” (14:02, Nick Robinson)
• Cameron’s Conservative Pivot to Austerity
  • The Tories shifted from “sharing the proceeds of growth” to embracing austerity, presenting themselves as honest about hard times ahead (15:08, Nick Robinson).
  • The phrase “you didn’t fix the roof while the sun was shining” stuck to Labour, regardless of the global crisis context (15:57, Joe Coburn).

4. Detoxifying and Modernizing the Conservative Brand

• Cameron intentionally moved the party away from Thatcher-era perceptions, embracing social progression (19:38, Nick Robinson).

5. Politics in Crisis: The Expenses Scandal

• Impact on All Parties
  • The expenses scandal deeply undermined public trust in politics and Parliament (20:31, Joe Coburn).
  • Cameron’s swift, ruthless internal justice contrasted with Brown’s slow, personal, and defensive response (21:39–24:46, Nick Robinson et al.).
  • “He [Cameron] made lots of his MPs and shadow ministers pay things back…Cameron was brutal, but it worked for him.” (21:40-21:41, Nick Robinson)
• Brown's Personal Fragility
  • Brown’s inability to distance himself emotionally blinded him to how the public perceived both the crisis and his response (23:18, Nick Robinson).
  • Cameron, less vulnerable on this front, asserted control and restored some trust on the Tory side.

6. Communicating in the Age of Social Media

• Social Media Missteps
  • Brown’s awkward YouTube address during the scandal fell flat compared to Cameron’s more relaxed “Web Cameron” series (25:40–26:37).
  • “It looked terrible, it looked awful. And I don't think they repeated it…you look at Andy Burnham, well, he's all over it because he is so much better at that way of communicating.” (26:14, Joe Coburn)
• Brown’s Strengths and Weaknesses as a Communicator
  • Although capable of rousing speeches, Brown struggled with TV and radio, viewing questions as personal attacks (27:46, Nick Robinson).
  • “He would get up, up, forgetting to remove the microphone cable. One of his aides would have to run…to stop him…being caught round the throat…” (27:46, Nick Robinson).

7. Memorable Anecdotes & Inside Stories

• Nick Robinson recounts an incident where a flustered aide rugby-tackled Gordon Brown to stop him accidentally showing a note about Robinson during a sensitive interview (29:03).
  • “He wrote in big letters in a flat tip pen…Gordon holds it up…my camera operator starts to focus on this picture gets under your skin. And at this point, Gord’s advisor rugby tackles the prime minister…” (29:03, Nick Robinson)

8. The Official Campaign Begins

• Brown finally calls the election for May 6, 2010. His announcement:
  • “The Queen has kindly agreed to the dissolution of Parliament and a general election will take place on May 6th.” (29:46, Gordon Brown)
• Episode 2 will cover “the thrills and spills” of the campaign, including the infamous “bigot gate” and Nick Clegg’s surge in popularity.

---

Memorable Quotes (with Timestamps & Attributions)

• “He marched everyone to the top of the hill…then he bottled it.”
  — Joe Coburn [05:44]
• “The terror people faced when they were told you might not get your money out of the bank when Northern Rock crashed…I mean, in the 1930s, people thought I might have no savings by the end of the day—that is the drama.” — Nick Robinson [14:02]
• “We're being straight with you. Times have changed. The country hasn't got any money, we have to cut our cloth, we're borrowing too much to pay for all the things we want.”
  — Nick Robinson [15:53]
• “You didn't fix the roof while the sun was shining.” — Joe Coburn [15:57]
• “Cameron was brutal, but it worked for him.”
  — Nick Robinson [21:26]
• “He could give some of the most rousing speeches…but he was, and it's not ungenerous to say, a dreadful communication via TV or radio.”
  — Nick Robinson [27:46]

---

Timestamps: Key Segments

• 01:15 – Introduction & series overview (Adam Fleming)
• 03:33 – Guests’ personal contexts in 2010
• 04:30 – The lost 2007 “snap” election
• 06:35 – The Tories’ inheritance tax gambit
• 08:06 – Pressure on Brown about calling an election
• 09:29 – Nick Robinson's tense post-interview with Brown
• 10:36 – The 2008 Financial Crisis breaks
• 13:25 – Tory pivot from optimism to austerity
• 19:38 – Cameron “detoxifies” the Conservative Party
• 20:28 – The impact and fallout of the expenses scandal
• 25:40 – Brown’s YouTube address vs Web Cameron
• 27:46 – Brown’s communication struggles and interview anecdotes
• 29:46 – Brown announces the 2010 General Election

---

Tone & Style

The discussion is informal but insightful, featuring candid personal anecdotes, gentle humour, and sharp political analysis. The hosts and guests blend “insider” views with explanations accessible to listeners who didn’t live through these events.

---

Conclusion

Takeaway:
Episode one sets the stage for the extraordinary 2010 election, mapping how the contestants—Brown, Cameron, and an emerging Clegg—navigated a period of crisis, scandal, and public anger. Rival party strategies, leadership flaws, and the changing political/media landscape all converged to make 2010 a “change” election in more ways than one.

Coming Up:
The next episode will delve into the campaign itself, including the unfolding drama of “bigot gate” and Nick Clegg’s skyrocketing profile.

Transcript

[Podcast Advertiser]

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk. If you are currently overpaying on software to run your business, remember this number 10,000. That's the number of new businesses that join Odoo per month. Join odoo [e-mail] that's odoo.com Ever wonder why we make the choices we do and how to make smarter ones? Introducing Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join Wharton Professor Katie Milkman, an award winning behavioral scientist and author of the best selling book how to Change as she shares true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes and everyday people about why we do the things we do and how to make better choices to help avoid costly mistakes. Each episode covers the latest research in behavioral science and dives into themes like the power of self control, shaping your mindset for success, navigating new beginnings and why starting over can feel so hard. Listen to Choiceologywab.com podcast or wherever you listen.

[Adam Fleming]

Hello, we've got another old newscast for you. And this is our series of old newscasts where we're looking at big electoral and democratic moments between 1996 and 2016. And we're doing that throughout the summer with the help of friends of the podcast who were there at the time. The last miniseries of Old Newscast was about the rise of David Cameron. This weekend's box set is about his first electoral test and also the first electoral test for his big political rivals, Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg. Newscast.

[Nick Robinson]

Newscast from the BBC.

[Gordon Brown]

I'm asking you, the British people, for a clear and straightforward mandate.

[Nick Robinson]

You're joking.

[Podcast Advertiser]

Gordon says Nick agrees with Gordon and

[Nick Robinson]

Nick says Nick doesn't agree with Gordon.

[Joe Coburn]

This area used to be full of businesses that made things.

[Nick Robinson]

I strongly agree with you, Gene. It's been the most exciting, unpredictable election for a generation. I can't believe this.

[Adam Fleming]

Hello, it's Adam in the old Newscast studio. And to help us remember the 2010 election, we're joined by two friends of the podcast plus, please welcome back to the BBC Joe Coburn. Hello, Joe.

[Joe Coburn]

Hello, Adam.

[Adam Fleming]

What were you doing in 2010?

[Joe Coburn]

What was I doing in 2010? We were limbering up at the Daily Politics for a campaign that was unique in many, many ways, despite the fact that we've had so many elections subsequently and it felt like a change election, to use that hackneyed phrase. So we were getting ready to do the program every day. In fact, it was my first election with Daily Politics with Andrew Neal and that sort of daily going to the press conferences because they were very much A thing the first TV leaders debates, when that finally got agreed, was sort of transformative for us as broadcasters, whether it actually had that much sort of impact on the outcome. And at the same time, certainly in the run up to it, I was still working as a political correspondent and I was a Blair babe, if you like to use that probably politically incorrect expression, because I'd started as a network political correspondent when Blair came into Downing Street. And so Brown, as it turned out, was the sort of bookend of all those labor years. And I never really thought that the Conservatives in the run up to the sort of financial crash were ever going to make it back.

[Adam Fleming]

Right.

[Joe Coburn]

And of course they didn't make it back entirely on their own on this occasion. So it was a fascinating election.

[Adam Fleming]

Lots to discuss. Also staying up late from the Today program, it's Nick Robinson. Hello, Nick.

[Joe Coburn]

Hello.

[Nick Robinson]

Yes, I'm trying to dig into the recesses of my memory. It was my first election as the BBC political editor. I don a general election at ITV where I was also editor. But yeah, having reported on all of the build up through the Blair years to that first and as it turned out last Gordon Brown election was quite something.

[Adam Fleming]

And I was a very junior reporter working on a program called the Daily Politics, which has already been mentioned. I mean, I'm not sure I did any like, great, groundbreaking journalism that election.

[Joe Coburn]

Oh, I'm, I'm sure you did.

[Adam Fleming]

Oh, well, let's, let's see what the archive said, Nick, before. I mean, we have to actually go quite a long way back to the genesis of the 2010 election because it was actually really in 2007 when there wasn't an election, but there might have been.

[Nick Robinson]

Yeah. And isn't that fascinating in today's context with Andy Burnham? So in other words, Gordon Brown takes over from Tony Blair. Big difference with Burnham. We all knew he was going to. We had known for months, indeed, if not years before. There'd been a great deal of tension between him and, and here's the parallel with Burnham phenomenally popular. Very quickly, Gordon Brown appears to his own party, but I think to the country as a whole and certainly to the media reporting on him. Like a relief.

[Joe Coburn]

Yeah.

[Nick Robinson]

At the end of the Blair period, he governs competently. He's faced with a whole series of challenges. There are floods. I went to film inside. Yeah, yeah, inside the Cabinet room with him when he was dealing with the floods and he looked like he was in control. There was a terrorist attack and Glasgow, his MP from not that far away and so on. And suddenly the view built up. Surely he will get his own mandate, he'll go for an early election and he let the story run and run and run and then he bottled it.

[Adam Fleming]

And that's the thing though, about that period, Joe. It wasn't just political gossip that Gordon Brown might want to have an election. You could actually sense that the preparations were being made to have it in 2007.

[Joe Coburn]

Oh, they absolutely were. And Nick is right, he did come in with a honeymoon period, didn't he? Gordon Brown, despite the fact that the Blairites never of course forgave Gordon Brown, what they saw as the sort of betrayal and taking over. And he did do reasonably well in those first few months. But what began to transpire was this feeling that if he didn't go for the election that he would be seen and that is exactly what happened as a ditherer, as someone who was indecisive. And he marched everyone to the top of the hill. And if you remember, Nick, the Conservatives sort of performed a rather clever trick, got one over at the conference when they announced inheritance tax. George Osborne, I think, announced that inheritance tax policy never actually came to pass of a million pounds.

[Nick Robinson]

You could get that tax.

[Joe Coburn]

Exactly. And it cut through instantly. And I think it was that that suddenly made Gordon Brown et al think, ooh, hang on a second, can we win this election with a bigger majority? And it is, you're right, it's an absolute echo of the sort of Burnham, if you like, decision that he had to make. An Andy Burnham, I think personally was absolutely right to say, by the way, we're not going to do this election.

[Nick Robinson]

That means he won't, by the way.

[Joe Coburn]

Well, no, you're right, but at least he didn't let that story run and run.

[Nick Robinson]

Now, talking of it running and running, Adam, I now suddenly have this memory coming back. It was the most scared I've been as a political journalist in the sense I thought a leading politician might well throttle me. So when your political editor, one of the jobs you do, particularly at party conferences where the Today program which I now present is presented usually from a tiny little, you know, pop up studio or in this case, pretty sure we were in Bournemouth for the conference, in a hotel room, you sit alongside the person doing an interview, in this case Gordon Brown as Prime Minister and you're asked by the presenter straight afterwards you to give a kind of score. It's like being a strictly judge as your holder. The whole of this interview with Gordon Brown, which Sarah Montague now the World at One did, was are you gonna have an early election. Gordon became more and more irritated by a question.

[Joe Coburn]

Front pages of all the papers.

[Nick Robinson]

You've seen them.

[Joe Coburn]

MPs urge Brown to call an autumn election. The papers are full of talk of a snap general election.

[Gordon Brown]

But I've said there will be a time for that. But my focus today is on what I say to the country about the future, about the long term and about new policies that we can adopt.

[Joe Coburn]

Indeed, it is an important issue and it's. And arguably it's not fair on the election.

[Gordon Brown]

Sarah. Sarah, you can ask me for a running.

[Joe Coburn]

There is this sort of teasing. Can we just get a categorical. Rule it out for this.

[Gordon Brown]

I'm not going to give a running commentary on this issue. I've said before that there will be a time for this decision to be made about an election. Today I'm focusing on the issues that concern the country and I think, if I'm right, your listeners are interested, what are we going to do about the health service and hospitals? What are we gonna do to make for world class schools? What are we gonna do?

[Nick Robinson]

And at this moment, a bubble appears above my head, a thought bubble, thinking, I've gotta tell the truth, but how do I kind of.

[Adam Fleming]

And the truth was everyone is talking

[Nick Robinson]

about, yes, literally, the phrase I used, Adam on it. I've had to suppress more than a grin, almost a laugh, because it is his aides, his cabinet ministers, his advisors, who can talk of little else to journalists. This is not one of those games that journalists are playing on politicians. It's a game that politicians are playing via the media to unsettle their oppone. And also I think just to give him the option, just to see in a week or two whether he might like to give it a go.

[Joe Coburn]

The Prime Minister has a tough job this afternoon.

[Nick Robinson]

Gordon couldn't move the way the studio was laid out.

[Adam Fleming]

He was stuck there.

[Nick Robinson]

He was stuck listening to me basically say he wasn't telling the truth. He then left the studio at the end without speaking, furious. Furious. The door was heard to slam and I got a text from one of his advisors saying that he said to this person as they were fleeing down a corridor, who that has been talking to Nick Robinson. Wow. And this individual.

[Adam Fleming]

Yeah, it's the drawer of the Orient Express. You're very good.

[Nick Robinson]

Rehearsed it. That's literally what they said.

[Podcast Advertiser]

Everyone.

[Nick Robinson]

What are you talking about?

[Joe Coburn]

And that actually did for him too, really, in terms of the reframing post, the honeymoon of how the public to some extent and the Conservatives talked about him because didn't David Cameron have that line now? I'm not going to remember it completely correctly of he's the first Prime Minister to have bottled an election because he thought he was going to win. It sort of. It was all about exactly what you were talking about. He wasn't being straight. The polls had changed. It was nothing to do with polls, nothing to do with them. And yet it was all about that. I mean, we saw that of course, again with Theresa May, where she did go for it and it didn't work for her either much later on.

[Adam Fleming]

And so that was 2007. But then this huge era defining global financial crisis happens in 08, which is then followed by all sorts of stuff with government debt in Europe. And I suppose that's a sort of double edged sword for Gordon Brown because it meant bad news for the British economy. Yeah. So people felt bad and suddenly government spending and borrowing became very important. But equally, he'd been chancellor for 10 years, so he was quite good at gripping it.

[Joe Coburn]

I agree, in a way, for me at that time, his reputation was restored to some extent because there'd been all sorts of firefighting going on at number 10, with mini crises sort of erupting everywhere. This was Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling's moment to sort of calm the public. And I think they were reassuring, they weren't only reassuring to the British electorate. The sort of template that they used, the recapitalization package that they came up with, was something that was used and mimicked by quite a few countries, basically

[Adam Fleming]

pumping loads of money into the banks and the economy.

[Joe Coburn]

Absolutely. And there are two sort of vignettes that remind me of that moment and one of which was late in the day. Do you remember the G20 summit was being hosted in London with Barack Obama and Merkel. I mean, Gordon Brown was on London in London, in London. And they were able to sort of showcase exactly what it's like to have a Chancellor, a chancellor that most people thought had been pretty good during the Blair years, maybe because it was easier the economy wise. But anyway, he was now in charge, he'd got his hands on the tiller, all was calm. And the news channel, as was then, asked me at the very last minute on the evening, could I do the running commentary of all the leaders arriving? Oh, yes, yes, that's fine. So I sat down in the booth at Westminster where we've all worked and sure enough, all the leaders come in. The ones I recognised thankfully came in first. So yes, I recognised Barack Obama and Nicholas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel. And then it dawned on me that I was beginning to struggle a little

[Nick Robinson]

bit with who was coming.

[Adam Fleming]

The other 17.

[Joe Coburn]

Oh, dear. And there was a lot of padding about how we'd had Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, Nicholas Sarkozy. I suddenly remembered, I think it was Stephen Harper, the Canadian. But after that, Nick, I was really getting stuck up.

[Gordon Brown]

And they were.

[Joe Coburn]

I was on there forever, it felt like.

[Adam Fleming]

And the other thing that was happening in that period is a big transformation in what the Tories were offering, because David Cameron, and we've done a previous old newscast about him becoming Tory leader, he was Mr. Optimism. Their. Their catchphrase was sharing the proceeds of growth. In other words, the economy's booming, we'll give you tax cuts as a result. But then with all this chaos in the world financial markets and, and governments having real problems with their borrowing, then the Tory offer changed massively.

[Nick Robinson]

It changed dramatically and the mood changed dramatically. And I think it's worth remembering that even though I agree with you, Joe, that I think in a sense this played to Gordon Brown's strength and I think history will be very kind to him. I think people like Barack Obama and others who are around at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy, I know, do genuinely believe that the slogan, you know, Gordon Rand helped save the world economy is right, that he brought people together. And even though sometimes the policies don't make that much difference, the show of competence, the show of self belief, the shove together is very important in global markets. But, but, and here's my but don't forget the terror people faced. There'll be some people listening to this. You don't really remember it. The terror people faced when they were told you might not get your money out of the bank when Northern Rock crashed, as it did in 2007, and then there were runs on other banks that sense that the thing that we just take for granted in our lives, that the money you put in the bank, the money you put on deposit, that's safe money, that's fine, you'll always get this back. We were going back to a time, and I don't want to be too apocalyptic, but like the 1930s, I mean, in the 1930s, where people thought I might have no savings by the end of the day, that is the drama, I think, that lay behind. And even when people then get over that, in a sense, there has been a rescue of these institutions still always nags in the back of your mind, is this money really safe for these institutions? Really safe. And I think David Cameron and George Osborne, as His shadow chancellor. Extraordinarily young to be the next Chancellor in inverted.

[Adam Fleming]

Yeah. Still in his 30s.

[Nick Robinson]

Yeah. And not an economist, a historian.

[Podcast Advertiser]

Right.

[Nick Robinson]

A guy who wanted to be a journalist. He's not in the City of London or run a business or anything of that sort. They decided to pivot and to say at explicitly at the Conservative Party conference before that 2010 election, we're entering an era of austerity. Now. The word austerity is now used as a sort of insult, pejoratively. Most people say, ah, we don't want to go back to austerity. And look what happened in the austerity years and so on. They wore it as a badge of pride because what they were basically saying to go back to the idea of whether Gordon Brown was being straight or not, we're being straight with you. Times have changed. The country hasn't got any money, we

[Adam Fleming]

have to cut our cloth, we're borrowing too much to pay for all the things we want.

[Joe Coburn]

Well, and that was the clever pivot, to use Nick's words, that the Conservatives successfully landed on Gordon Brown and that was that you didn't fix the roof while the sun was shining. And it was used again and again. And I think there were various phrases that were subsequently used right into the campaign and certainly way beyond which was that actually the deficit was it. It was Labour's deficit. It wasn't as a result of the global financial crash. I mean, we all remember being on those programs endlessly on the daily polit and saying to Conservative politicians, how can you say, where is the evidence for saying that Gordon Brown and the Labour government crashed the economy? It was surely the global financial crash which Labour and Gordon Brown did their best to come out of, but it didn't matter. It had landed. That phrase in people's minds was that they hadn't actually, despite Gordon Brown's background as Chancellor, that they hadn't fixed the roof while the sun was shining. And I think to some extent that took the Conservatives through that period. Period. That change, as well as the detoxifying of the Tory brand that was also carrying on in earnest.

[Nick Robinson]

It's quite interesting to historically to remember this as well, because I think that's what Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves thought they were doing. So that when they were as pessimistic as they were now said by people to be a disaster, one of the reasons to go, when they announced there was a 22 billion pound Tory black hole, do you remember that they use that to justify cutting winter fuel allowance. I Think they were trying to play back to the Tories what the tourists had done to them. But what's interesting is why it didn't work. And one of the reasons is the tourists had some time to do it and they had a consistent message. And of course the tourists had not yet been elected, so it wasn't like, well, you promised us one thing, he delivered another. But the Conservatives were ruthless as they had been for listeners of a certain age or people who've read their history, utterly rootless about the winter of discontent at the end of the 1970s, which were featuring in Tory election broadcasts for decades afterwards, never mind months and years, the same thing of we will nail Gordon Brown for this financial crisis.

[Adam Fleming]

Joe said that phrase about David Cameron detoxifying the Conservative Party. Just do a little potted history of, of that.

[Nick Robinson]

The Tories under David Cameron referred to modernizing the Tory party or detoxifying the Conservative Party. And what that was basically saying is the things with which the Tory party had allowed themselves to become associated through the Thatcher years, even in John Major's era, and I say even because he was seen as a kind of, kind of gentler, sort of conservative kind of gentler. I'm putting in inverted commas because there's a phrase that George Bush once used to distinguish his brand of conservatism from Ronald Reagan's. David Cameron took the decision that they had to look frankly more modern about society. So where the Tories were seen as hostile to single parent families, they were no longer hostile to gay men and women. I mean, after all, Mrs. Thatcher brought in Section 28 which attacked local authorities if they, in inverted commas promoted gay rights through the literature they had in libraries or through schools. So it was a concerted effort by DEF came to embrace progressive courses, to broaden out a sense of what conservatism was and who could be a Conservative. All of which put him in a better place when he had a tougher economic message because he got a much softer image for his party as a whole.

[Adam Fleming]

And forget individual political parties or individual politicians, the entire of politics, its reputation had taken a huge blow because of the MP's expenses scandal.

[Joe Coburn]

Well, that was one of the sort of big moments, if you like. And in fact we've discussed at length the whole expenses scandal. Another old crisis, another old newscast. Gosh, there's me again, we're getting our money's worth. But the interesting thing about the expenses scandal was how it reflected the party's reactions, if you like. Because if you remember the Daily Telegraph when they Started revealing it, they sort of front loaded it and it tended to be. And why wouldn't it be government ministers? Because Labour ministers, they were the ones in government at the time. The most memorable images, of course, are of Tory MPs with duck houses and moats and so on and so forth.

[Adam Fleming]

An example of an expense that wasn't even paid in the end.

[Joe Coburn]

Well, exactly. It was one of those moments when I remember at the time thinking, it's just destroyed domestic politics and people's belief in it, in trust as it sort of was dripped out day in, day out. And the government definitely, with Gordon Brown, definitely took a hit on it, you know, without a shadow of a doubt. In fact, I think it was Labour MPs that went to jail as a result of it. And the other consequence was that there was a complete departure of an awful lot of members of Parliament, which is why 2010 became another kind of change election, if you like, because it literally did change. It was the sort of end of a whole old guard for both Labour and the Conservatives. And I think in a way, David Cameron fronted it up more effectively in his response than Gordon Brown. And the Liberal Democrats weren't really tainted by it.

[Nick Robinson]

David Cameron was brutal, but it worked for him.

[Joe Coburn]

Yeah.

[Nick Robinson]

So his Conservative leader, I don't remember all of the details, but he effectively had a kind of court of his own.

[Adam Fleming]

Oh, he made lots of his. His MPs and shadow ministers pay things back.

[Podcast Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Adam Fleming]

Which they were not necessarily happy about.

[Nick Robinson]

They had to come in and justify why they claimed money. And as you say. But crucially, he'd set up his own system of justice rather than saying, well, we'll leave it to the parliamentary authorities or public opinion. Gordon Brown, in stark contrast, was utterly flat footed when it came to the issue of MPs expenses. And one of his weaknesses as a politician is that he took things incredibly personally. So the first day of the expensive scandal focused on his expenses now. And I was reporting as political editor of the BBC. I still remember reading the story and thinking, this is a bit thin. It was about how he'd claimed for a cleaner.

[Adam Fleming]

Yeah.

[Nick Robinson]

And there's also an issue of Sky TV subscription now, as it happens. I had known for decades Gordon's brother wasn't in politics, but I come through him in journalism. He used to work many years ago at the BBC and I was quite quickly able to call him, call a couple of other people who explained in the nicest possible way that Gordon was utterly chaotic when it came to paying bills and to organizing his domestic life. And that they'd sort of done it for him and there was sort of nothing to see here. And I did my best on the news to reflect without breaking confidences, you know, that there was more to this than there might seem to be at first look. And I thought, if I were him, I would have thought, well, that view, that's gone away. He spent days, I know, in the reaction I got, obsessing with the injustice of what had been said about him. And it meant that when there was this huge.

[Adam Fleming]

Morals were so important. Yeah. And such a big part of his life.

[Nick Robinson]

But it. But it meant that there was a sort of blindness.

[Adam Fleming]

Right.

[Nick Robinson]

And I. I use that word carefully because those who know Gordon Brown well will know he has very poor sight. He's lost the sight in one eye and very poor side. But there was a sort of political blindness. No, I think you're right to him right on that, because he couldn't get over the rage he was feeling at the way he felt he was being mistreated. So at the very point he needed to step back and say, how do the public see this? Because the big problem with the expensive crisis was that everyone in the world of Westminster knew that there was a system which was essentially a top up to your pay.

[Adam Fleming]

Yeah.

[Nick Robinson]

Which is. Mrs. Thatcher, all those years ago, not wanted to give MPs a pay rise. A new generous system of MPs expenses was introduced and the officials effectively said to MPS, don't you think you might want to claim for that?

[Adam Fleming]

Yeah, we'll help you buy an expensive sofa for your rented flat that'll make up for your pay not going up very much.

[Nick Robinson]

You've never explicit. But in a sense, instead of Gordon being able to pull back, look at it and go, how does this look? I must be seen to react. He was prickly, defensive and slow. Cameron instantly, despite being a very rich man, perhaps because he was a very rich man, it meant, frankly, didn't need a free sofa. So he and George Osborne, also from a wealthy background, they weren't agonizing whether a thousand here or a thousand there. And it made them more able to be brutal to their own party and say, we're not having this, this has got to change.

[Joe Coburn]

But it's so interesting what you say about Gordon Brown, because it totally played into that idea of how brittle he was really, as a character when it came to anything that might make him look as if he'd been, I don't know, playing the system slightly dishonest or venal. Well, absolutely, and I totally agree Cameron and Osbourne, they just cut through it all and it worked so much better for them. I mean, in the end, I don't think it was something that made voters at the election think, ooh, Gordon Brown and expenses. I'm not going to vote Labour. But just at the time, it showed, as you said, the ruthlessness of the Cameron Osborne operation. And so when it came to the election, they had done. They had sort of cleared the deck, if you like, of all of those accusations of torytoffs moat houses or duck. Houses and moats, not moat houses and ducks.

[Adam Fleming]

And then there was also just the example of Gordon Brown not really being able to cope with how you communicate as a politician in the era of social media. So during the expenses scandal, he did a big address to the nation that he posted on YouTube, smiling at all the wrong times.

[Gordon Brown]

The issue of expenses is casting a cloud over the whole of Parliament. So members of Parliament need to have the humility to recognize that the country has lost confidence in the current system, to restore our faith in Parliament and the good that it can do on the public.

[Adam Fleming]

And I just remember being no expert in political comms, but thinking, that looks really weird.

[Joe Coburn]

It looked terrible, it looked awful. And I don't think they repeated it. And I remember when it came out and everybody was cringing and it is that lesson. I mean, again, echoes of Keir Starmer doing something. If it doesn't work for you, probably best not to even try it because it doesn't look relatable. You look at Andy Burnham, well, he's all over it because he is so much better at that way of communicating.

[Adam Fleming]

David Cameron was doing these little videos called Web Cameron, which is a very dated little tech phrase for you, like from his kitchen sink that he was doing. He's doing his. He's doing his wash.

[Podcast Advertiser]

Comfortable.

[Nick Robinson]

And look, yeah, I mean, the curiosity with Gordon Brown, and in this sense, it's not a fair comparison with Keir Starmer. Gordon Brown could give some of the most rousing speeches that you ever hear. Yeah, I mean, genuinely moving speeches that he would give. He would captivate a room, small as well as large, on a theme, particularly moral theme, something where he was passionate, but he was, and it's not ungenerous to say a dreadful communication via TV or radio. He. He saw questions as an insult or a threat or a form of abuse. I mean, I. I now sort of slightly shudder with memories of interviews that ended. Almost every single interview I did with Gordon Brown ended with him in a rage, furious with what I'd asked him, making accusations about why I'd ask the things to do quite often almost garrotting himself because he was so cross. He would get up, up, forgetting to remove the microphone cable. One of his aides would have to run across to stop him sort of, you know, being caught round the throat by a microphone cable. Am I allowed an entirely gratuitous anecdote?

[Adam Fleming]

Yes, please, please. What I love is that the 2010 election hasn't even started yet. We're nearly at the end of episode one of our series about 2010 election. That means episode two will be a real blockbuster. No, but go ahead, go ahead.

[Nick Robinson]

Things became so bad in interviews that I did with Gordon Brown and to be fair, not just me, it turned out quite a lot of people have the same experience. But I seem to particularly upset him. Even though we'd had a rather good relationship when he was Chelsea, the Exchequer that they team, he would experiment whether, whether to put me first in a run of interviews. Because on foreign trips or on trips around the country, often poor prime ministers are doing, you know, two, three, four, maybe even 10 interviews in a row. Put Nero as the first, put him at the end. And on this particular occasion, they chose to put him at the end. And one of his close advisors, recently elevated to the House of Lords, those who are well informed about politics will have to guess who I'm referring to. Decided that he would help Gordon out by writing him a message which read, nick Robinson gets under your skin. Stay calm. But because Gordon's eyesight is very bad.

[Joe Coburn]

Yeah, you have to write in big letters.

[Nick Robinson]

He wrote in big letters in a flat tip pen.

[Adam Fleming]

Right.

[Nick Robinson]

And the cameras are still in the room. I'm not in the room, but the cameras are still in the room because we share cameras between broadcasters. Gordon holds it up like that and my camera operator starts to focus on this picture gets under your skin. And at this point, Gord's advisor Rugby tackles the prime minister in order to knock the piece of paper out of his hand so it can't be read. It was. It was interesting times.

[Adam Fleming]

Okay, so that brings us to the moment in April 2010 when Gordon Brown finally announces the election that people thought he was maybe gonna have in 2007. And it sounded like this.

[Gordon Brown]

And it's probably the least well kept secret of recent years, but the Queen has kindly agreed to the dissolution of Parliament and a general election will take place on May 6th.

[Adam Fleming]

And so coming up in episode two, we will do all the thrills and spills of what it was like actually covering that campaign in various places. That will of course include the now infamous bigot gate with Mrs. Duffy. And of course I agree with Nick because Nick Clegg was the relatively new leader of the Lib Dems and he became briefly, very, very popular in that election campaign. Nick, thank you very much. Thank you, Joe. Thanks to you too.

[Joe Coburn]

Pleasure. Newscast Newscast from the BBC from one newscaster to another, thank you so much for making it to the end of this episode. You clearly do, in the words of Chris Mason, ooze stamina. Can I also gently encourage you to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds? Tell everyone you know. And don't forget, you can email us [e-mail] or if you're that way inclined, send us a WhatsApp on 440-332-39480 be assured, I promise we listen to everyone.

[Podcast Advertiser]

Investing with Schwab is like spending a Saturday at a great farmer's market. You can fill your reusable tote with a bit of everything. Maybe you go for some free range self directed investing or perhaps you pick up a few farm fresh trades while you peruse. You can even get help from a dedicated advisor. That's full service wealth management. Mix, match and change your mind whenever you want. Because at Schwab you can invest your way. No matter your goals or appetite for investing, Schwab has everything you need all in one place. Visit schwab.com to learn more.