Comparison: Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown last night likened himself to literature's most tortured antihero as he insisted he has no intention of resigning as Prime Minister.

In an extraordinary interview, he said it was 'absolutely correct' to compare him to Heathcliff, the brooding and intense character in Emily Bronte's novel Wuthering Heights. 

He added: 'Well, maybe an older Heathcliff, a wiser Heathcliff.'

His remarks are likely to be seized upon by his political opponents.

The Prime Minister has been likened to Heathcliff before by commentators, but has never agreed with the comparison himself.

In Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff ends up a broken, tormented man haunted by the ghost of his lover Catherine.

Last night Tory frontbencher Chris Grayling said: 'If Gordon Brown is a brooding, romantic hero, then I am a sex god.

'Nobody thinks he is a character in Wuthering Heights. They think he's the author of Hard Times.'

Others in Westminster were speculating that in likening himself to Heathcliff, Mr Brown may have been making a coded reference to the fact he felt himself a victim of Tony Blair's legacy  -  haunted by the ghost of the former Premier's policies in the way Heathcliff was haunted by the ghost of Catherine.

Liberal Domocrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable, who speculated that Gordon Brown had never actually read Wuthering Heights, added: ‘Heathcliff may be dark and brooding but he is also ruthless and vindictive.

‘He ended his life a broken and tormented man haunted by a ghost. Tony Blair perhaps?’

Love on screen: Laurence Olivier and Merie Oberon as Heathcliff and Cathy in the 1939 film of Wuthering Heights

Anthony McCarthy, the acting director of the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Yorkshire, said that Heathcliff was a man prone to ‘domestic violence, kidnapping, possibly murder, and digging up his dead lover’.

‘He is moody and unkind to animals,’ he told The Daily Telegraph.

‘Is this really a good role model for a Prime Minister?’

Healthcliff has been played in the movies by such actors and Ralph Fiennes and Timothy Dalton, a former James Bond.
One Labour MP said yesterday that he could not see which ‘one of these Gordon most resembles’.

Mr Brown, giving an unusually personal interview to GMTV presenter Gloria De Piero for New Statesman magazine, firmly rejected any suggestion that he might resign, with Labour consistently 20 points behind the Conservatives in the opinion polls.

'I'm here to do a job and I'll leave when I finish the job. I'm not here for the sake of being here,' he said.

'It's the best job in the world and every day there is a new challenge.'

He repeated his insistence that he is the best man to steer Britain through turbulent economic times.

On a more personal issue, Mr Brown admitted biting his nails is his most unappealing habit.

'I've tried to stop biting my nails  -  they're pretty good,' he said, before glancing down at his hands. 'OK,' he then added. 'They're not.'

He dismissed claims that he regularly loses his temper. 'When you've got difficult decisions to make, you've got to be calm and considered,' he said. 'I don't generally lose my temper.'

Asked what time he goes to bed, Mr Brown said: 'It depends.' Responding to rumours that he tries to survive on just four hours of sleep a night, like Margaret Thatcher, he insisted: 'No, that's not enough.'

However, Mr Brown was this morning due to chair Cabinet just four hours after arriving in Downing Street from a 14-hour flight back from the G8 summit in Japan, with a stop- off for refuelling in Siberia.

He will then give a statement to MPs in the Commons on the outcome of the meeting.

The Prime Minister's timetable on the way out to the summit was similarly punishing.

He got off a 14-hour flight and went straight into all-day meetings with other world leaders. His schedule may alarm Cabinet colleagues, some of whom have publicly urged him to take a holiday.

Mr Brown also revealed in the interview that Please Please Me by the Beatles was the first record he ever bought, and said one of his favourite writers is Ian Rankin, whom he described as a 'great guy'.

He refused to reveal what he bought his wife Sarah for her birthday, laughing, 'Oh, come on. That's a secret.'

The Prime Minister said he is an avid viewer of sport on the small screen.

'I like watching sport on television, but I'd like to go to more sporting occasions,' he added. 'I could watch sport all night.

Although watching Andy Murray's five-set match wasn't particularly relaxing.'

Mr Brown said he rarely drinks alcohol in the evening. 'I tend not to drink  -  you've got to be fresh in the morning.'

And asked what the most unexpected things was about his job, he replied simply: 'The unexpected.'

Last night as he flew back to Britain with a Press contingent who made his party aware of the stir his 'Heathcliff' comments would cause, his aides stressed that his remarks had been intended purely as a joke.

Bronte in brief

• A foundling living in Liverpool, Heathcliff is rescued from poverty to live with the Earnshaw family at Wuthering Heights in Yorkshire
  
• He and his adoptive sister Catherine roam the moors and become inseparable, but he is treated as an outcast by his adoptive brother, Hindley
  
• Hindley inherits the estate and forces Heathcliff to work as a hired hand
  
• Catherine agrees to marry refined neighbour Edgar Linton and devastated Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights
  
• Some years later, he returns a rich man intent on destroying those who wronged him
• He takes over Wuthering Heights
  
• Catherine dies in childbirth
  
• Her daughter falls in love with Hindley's son, and Heathcliff becomes haunted by his lost love's ghost
  
• He dies broken and tormented and is buried next to Catherine's grave