Brown Downplays US Fissure

(NEWSER) - Gordon Brown is livid and his colleagues in the Labour Party are ripping up copies of the Sun in public after Rupert Murdoch ended 12 years of support and backed Conservative David Cameron this week. “We don't need an Australian-American coming to our country with a paper that has never supported any progressive policies ... telling us how politics should be run in this country," said one union leader. More»

British PM gets poll boost in crisis, silencing critics

(NEWSER) - In America the financial crisis has dealt yet another blow to an already unpopular President Bush. But in Britain, collapsing banks and volatile markets are the best thing to happen to Gordon Brown in recent months. In reasserting his global economic know-how, the prime minister, who is reportedly preparing an American-style bailout, has seen his once dismal poll numbers climb fast, reports the Daily Mail. More»

Tory takes vacancy in industrial district

(NEWSER) - The crushing defeat for the Labor Party yesterday in an election in a working class district of England could spell disaster for Prime Minister Gordon Brown, reports the Guardian. The opposition Tory candidate beat the ruling party choice in a by-election to fill a death vacancy by a whopping margin in the decaying northern England industrial town of Crewe—the kind of place considered a bedrock of Labor support. More»

PM takes final questions; queen asks Brown to form government

(NEWSER) - Tony Blair handed his resignation to the queen at 1:15 this afternoon, ending a decade as prime minister of the United Kingdom marked by unprecedented prosperity but marred by a deeply unpopular war in Iraq. In a choreographed ritual, Elizabeth II asked Chancellor Gordon Brown, who has been waiting patiently for the question for 13 years, to form a government. More»

After 10 years at No. 10, PM says he'll pass torch to Brown within weeks

(NEWSER) - As he marked a decade in power, British prime minister Tony Blair said yesterday he'll step down within weeks. Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown is expected to succeed Blair, who stopped short of officially anointing Brown but told a Labour rally, "In all probability, a Scot will become prime minister of the United Kingdom." More»