The year of waiting, the countless hours of planning — if not plotting — are over. Gordon Brown, it seems, has not just measured the curtains at No 10 Downing Street metaphorically. They have been ordered and delivered.
Indeed, Brown is actually preparing to move into No 10, and not on May 4 or May 31, but possibly sooner.
After years living away from the upstairs No 10 flat handed him by Blair back in 1997, the chancellor of the exchequer has decided that now his family has expanded it is the time to move in properly.
He is taking his wife, Sarah, son John, baby Fraser and a pile of Postman Pat and Little Miss Helpful videos into the No 10 apartment previously occupied by John Major and Lady Thatcher. He has also been advised by security officials that it would be easier to protect the family inside one residence at No 10.
The move has, it seems, been accompanied by discussion between the two families about the proper boundaries between Nos 10 and 11.
The chancellor wants more living space, finding the relatively poky No 10 flat too small for his expanding needs. He would like to annex one or two rooms occupied by the Blairs in the No 11 flat, a request that has not gone down well with the neighbours. Brown reasons that with the Blair family starting to flee the nest, the chancellor’s own expanding and younger family warrants more space.
Cherie Blair is not delighted. The nadir came when she was apparently told by an aide last week that the curtains had arrived. She asked: ”What curtains? I have ordered no curtains.” She hadn’t. They had come for the Browns; they had been inadvertently sent to the wrong address. It is galling enough for Cherie Blair to see headlines about her husband screaming: ”It’s curtains for Blair”, only to find the same measured curtains being delivered for the Browns.
Some might say it is a sign of presumption that Brown should be moving into No 10 even before a leadership contest has been called, let alone a vote cast. It is taking the stable and orderly transition to a new level.
But as with everything in the Brown-Blair rivalry, not everything is as it seems in this row. The drapes of wrath have a history.
Back in 1997, Blair, resplendent with a massive majority and a large family, decided that he would like to live above the shop. His counterpart, Gordon Brown, was unmarried at the time of taking up his post as chancellor.
The two agreed that Blair would take over the larger No 11 flat, traditionally the home of the chancellor, and Brown occupy the No 10 flat with economic texts and pizza for company. So No 10 continued to be the prime minister’s official residence and contained the prime ministerial offices, but Blair and his family actually lived in No 11.
After Brown married and the Blairs had their fourth child, the chancellor moved out to his own private flat nearby and the Blair family pretty well occupied both.
In reality, two and a half centuries of use as government residences has led to so much interlinking between the two houses that it can be hard to know where the boundary of one ends and the other begins. The walls between not only the houses in Downing Street, but also the adjacent houses behind them on Horseguards Parade, have been knocked through. This made the recent negotiation over living space more complex.
So now as Brown prepares to re-enter No 10 — or at least the flat above — expect the police to be called to a domestic at any moment. The only alternative may be a partition using some of the redundant masonry from the Berlin Wall. Either way, there goes the neighbourhood. — Â