The Telegraph – Richard Spencer
” I should have warned him, or his aides, or maybe the British Embassy in Beijing. But I didn’t see it coming, and as a result he – Gordon Brown, when Chancellor of the Exchequer – gave me my most cringe-inducingly embarrassing moment of seven years living in China. It was 2005, and he was on a tour to show off his foreign policy credentials. Whether that worked or not I don’t know, but it did nothing to improve his reputation for misjudging an audience. The “moment” came during a visit to a secondary school. “When he was their age,” teenage interviewers from the student newspaper asked the then would-be prime minister, “what had he wanted to do when he grew up? What would he like to be if he weren’t a minister?” Mr Brown let out one of his deep, forced chortles. “A football player,” he said. There was a slight gasp from his audience – pupils, teachers and Communist Party officials alike. “If not, a football manager. In fact I often wish I were a football manager now. Hurr, hurr.” There was a silence, followed by nervous titters, and I could immediately tell what they were thinking. Football players may, in the West, be glamourised, but they are hardly to be taken seriously, are they? Why would any proper person – like a minister – prefer to hack a ball about rather than guide the economic destiny of his people? Was this what the British Empire had come to? (While the British Empire is still officially demonised in China, there is a certain respect for its achievements.) Then, Mr Brown turned the tables. So what do you want to do when you grow up, he asked his interrogators? (They spoke flawless English.) “A research biologist,” said one. A future entrepreneur and an engineer were next in line. Of course.”(more)