Mousey Brown being sharp
Maybe there’s hope for Gordon Brown after all. In a joint press conference with George W Bush at Camp David, Bush riffs about a journalist who’s turning 38 today. (I quote from memory): “See, that’s what I like about this great country of ours. Here’s this fellow, under 40, and he’s asking questions of you and me!”
Deadpan, Brown replies: “Six members of my cabinet are under 40.”
Yeah, all no doubt ‘rising men’.
Ruth Kelly might resent that description ;-)
Well she might, but she has less than a year to go as one of the six. D’you think Brown will replace her with someone younger?
Heh, maybe. To run an effective left-wing party, you need young, impressionable people.
No, I don’t think that’s it. It’s not a matter of party. The UK may be more elitist than the US. In a more elitist framework, the best people can be identified early and put to work in high position at a fairly young age. I suspect Brown understood Bush’s joke in the UK sense as implying that Brown was failing to make full use of the available talent pool.
Let me try this alternative explanation.: in the UK, investment in human capital pays a dividend sooner and depreciates faster. It would be taken as an affront to be told that one’s cabinet were a bunch of half-depreciated has beens.