Naomi loves Sarah: Mrs Brown prepares for life after No 10

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10 April 2012

The Labour leader faces his Ides of June this week with local and European elections that could destabilise his troubled leadership.

But as the PM fights his way through the doldrums, one member of Team Brown is flourishing, with a new network of glamorous international connections from Paris Hilton to Naomi Campbell.

Operation Gordon may be spluttering: Operation New Sarah is flying ahead. She has become close to the supermodel, so much so that the notoriously unpredictable Campbell readily agrees to talk about her charity dealings with the First Wife: "Sarah is a wonderful, kind person with a huge heart," she tells the Standard.

The choice of Naomi as ambassadress for the White Ribbon Alliance — a campaign to combat maternal mortality in developing countries — was a surprising departure for Mrs Brown. She had previously stuck to safer options, like her friend JK Rowling, in raising the profile of her favoured causes — Piggybank Kids, support for lone mothers and now the Alliance.

Two more different women that Ms Campbell and Mrs Brown it would be hard to imagine. The supermodel is as well known for her string of anger-management "issues" as her amazing looks and hardwearing career. Mrs Brown is a byword for self-control: "cool" and "consummate" are the words most often deployed.

An archetypal Camden School for Girls product, she is well-educated, worldly and hooked into an intellectually self-confident London set. Ms Campbell forsook stage school for the catwalk at 15 — and has rarely been out of the tabloid headlines since. They do, however, share a background of absent fathers.

When I ask Campbell what drew them together she sounds genuinely enthusiastic. "Sarah and I met about a year ago. I went to visit her at Downing Street to discuss Fashion For Relief [Campbell's charity catwalk show]. Sarah wanted the White Ribbon Alliance to reach a wider audience and the fashion platform is a perfect way to do that.

"I was impressed by her poise and her commitment to the cause," adds Campbell. "We began working together and haven't stopped since."

Now they exchange "emails, texts and meetings in different cities" regularly. "She lets me know the facts and statistics and we are always brainstorming ways to drive up awareness. I feel privileged to know and work with Sarah, she has a huge heart and is a wonderful, kind person."

Heavens. This is the Naomi who rubbed shoulders with the masters of the universe at the G20 dinner — a novel experience for both sides, one imagines. "They pulled off the dinner graciously and were very hospitable and generous," recalls Campbell, sounding quite equal to the event.

The number of engagements Brown does in her own right is steadily rising. On Friday, the day after what is expected to be a drubbing for her husband in the local and European elections, she will be speaking at the CBI event for women innovators, while the rest of Labour quakes in expectation of a violent reshuffle.

It's made some party insiders wonder whether, with characteristic prescience, the former PR woman is preparing for a transition out of government to begin establishing the Browns as a highly connected power couple on the international scene, regardless of what the electorate throws at him.

"It's about the pictures as much as anything else," says one sceptical former No 10 spin doctor. "She knows the power of the celebrity image. If she launches a charity event it's just another nice pic of Sarah. If she does it alongside Naomi or Paris, it's Wow! look at what she's doing now' — so there's some reflected glory, definitely."

A leading light in a major public relations company says: "I don't think she's putting a foot wrong. She's steadily pushing back the boundaries of what First Ladies are expected to do. She's an enormous reinforcement to Gordon. Just by blogging and Twittering and showing she's connected to a wider culture than politics she creates a much more open and modern impression."

Critics however say the celebrity-seeking sits badly with her husband's claim to represent an earnest reckoning with excess and superficiality. "We're moving from this period when celebrity matters, when people have become famous for being famous," said her husband in his "age of seriousness" speech.

Well, not entirely. Mrs Brown seems to be on a one-woman crusade to brighten up the Labour Party in its doldrums, effusing recently on her Facebook page after meeting Paris Hilton at the First Ladies of Africa gala with Michelle Obama: "Loved Paris Hilton She's a smart, caring, considerate person. Who knew?" And who suspected that straitlaced Mrs Brown would be the one to tell us?

The perky cyber-era tone represents a new development for a political spouse who would have once sought to avoid the limelight. Ms Hilton batted back the requisite return schmooze about Mrs Brown being "smart and beautiful".

Piers Morgan, the Britain's Got Talent judge and former Mirror editor who accompanied Brown to the African First Ladies' summit in Los Angeles, says: "She knew we would get some stick for meeting Paris, but she doesn't care. She just said: I'm allowed to meet up with successful British exports [she lunched with Sharon Osbourne and Katherine Jenkins] — and I'm allowed to eat!'"

So what accounts for the Naomi attraction? "She just found her entertaining and liked her. She knows people are different from their caricature in the media."

Some have murmured, however, that Ms Campbell is too high-risk an associate for a Downing Street-backed charity. "Naomi is a feisty character who's had a few anger management problems," counters Morgan, "but who hasn't got something wrong with them?" Anger management issues, difficult reputation, been around a long time in the trade — not that different from the Prime Minister, then.

Steadily, the sombre Mr Brown has been drawn into the net of celebrity fascination: he even called Morgan on Saturday to check how Susan Boyle was after her post-defeat collapse.

It wasn't always this glossy. Early-period Sarah as political spouse wore a secretarial Hobbs wardrobe, sought a low profile and held her tongue. "I remember when she walked three paces behind Gordon, like a Saudi wife!" jokes one minister.

It was when his political troubles hit that she pulled out the stops, coming up with the idea of introducing Mr Brown at last year's Labour conference and wearing new British fashion design. She even totters on high heels — thrifty LK Bennett. There is a conscious decision not to "do" high fashion (too Sam Cam) and the odd disaster like a creased cotton jacket with appliqué, next to Carla Bruni's Dior. But she's lost the dowdiness.

Sarah's gang is an interesting social mix: there's the A-list glitz (Naomi), the self-made money (JK Rowling), the social connections (Emma Freud, Sabrina Guinness, Mariella Frostrup), and a touch of raucous levity (Kathy Lette).

Freud is top-table in every sense — with pride of place alongside Mrs Obama and the Russian and Japanese leaders' wives at the G20 dinner, she also links the Browns into the powerful Freud/Murdoch communications dynasty.

At Clement Freud's funeral both Gordon and Sarah joined the mourners, including Bono, Emma's husband (and Brown supporter) Richard Curtis and film-maker Paul Greengrass. Through his wife, the Prime Minister, whose natural social circle is hardcore Labour or academic, has been able to spread his wings into a different London.

"She is remarkable," Emma Freud tells me. "When you get to know her she is very sharp, very witty. She has an astonishing memory and seems to be able to recall every fact she has ever been told. Also she's a loyal, generous, kind, thoughtful friend. She watched over me when my father died last month ... She is honest with me in a way that many friends don't have the balls to be. She never whinges, never bitches and never whines."

Humour and the PM's wife might not seem like natural allies, but when the couple entertain in Downing Street, she is the one who will make the wry or irreverent comment.

She is at a G8 meeting with Mr Brown next week — and took the stage at the African First Ladies summit. The acceleration of her own speaking career may well be a clue to future plans. On one level, Operation New Sarah is a return to her former incarnation in public relations, but with the added experience, cachet and the bulging contacts book of her years in No 10.

Hobsbawm-Macaulay, which she founded with her friend Julia Hobsbawm, was a serious, slightly worthy PR outfit close to New Labour. Sarah understood the hankering, even on the Left of centre, for a touch of glamour but kept herself at a tactful distance from mere schmoozing. "Julia lunches, so I don't have to," she once said.

I ask one Downing Street insider whether there is any chance of her repeating her charm offensive by addressing the Labour conference again — in an even more turbulent period for her husband. "There's a debate to be had about that," he says cautiously. "But in the end, it's Sarah who decides."

As her husband contends with the ferocity of recession, MPs' expenses and a deep Labour poll slump, it is Mrs Brown who looks like she's future-proofing the household. "She is perfectly realistic that one day she will have to find a new life," says Piers Morgan. "Gordon will walk into any number of top jobs when there's an end to his life as Prime Minister.

"I don't think they're giving up at all. But she knows one day there'll be an end to this. When it comes, she'll be ready."

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