Over the past 11 years of Labour rule, English commentators have regularly griped about the emergence of a "Scottish mafia" that has allegedly overtaken government. Tony Blair packed his inner circle with Scots. Gordon Brown, a Scot, has a fellow Scot in the post of chancellor, and a Scot serves as speaker of the House of Commons. Among the English grievances: the Scots take more per head from the United Kingdom's coffers than their 50 million neighbors south of the border. Worse, under Scotland's self-rule arrangements, Scottish M.P.s in London can vote on issues that affect English taxpayers while Scottish affairs are largely in the hands of their own representative back in Edinburgh. Even as late as this summer, grousers in Brown's own Labour Party were pointing to his Scottish background as a partial explanation for his party's plunging support, particularly in the affluent south.
But no one's complaining anymore. In times of crisis, the stereotypical Scottish qualities—especially an unsmiling air of moral purpose—now enhance the prime minister's appeal. In the past two months, Brown's approval ratings have climbed 10 or more points to their highest levels since he moved into 10 Downing Street in June 2007. Meantime, his soft-spoken Scottish chancellor, Alistair Darling—twice voted the most boring politician in Britain—wins plaudits for his performance, giving credence to the idea that in a struggling economy grim is good.
Yes, the English have produced dour prime ministers of their own, but Brown is special. He's not just Scottish, he's a "son of the manse"—the child of a Presbyterian minister—a type supposed to embody national virtues of sober rectitude. "The qualities that Brown has could be found in any minister, but if you are the son of the manse, look dour and miserable and have some Scrooge-like characteristics, it is irresistible to link them to being Scottish," says Malcolm Rifkind, a Conservative M.P. raised in Scotland.
Accurate or not, such prejudices about accent and the geography of one's upbringing run deep in the United Kingdom. Shakespeare, an Englishman, routinely ridiculed his Welsh characters as pedantic windbags. Pollsters say one reason why former Labour leader Neil Kinnock failed to reach 10 Downing Street in the early 1990s was a Welsh accent linked with a weakness for blather. Among the English themselves, the wrong accent can provoke, particularly if it hints at superiority. As the (Irish) playwright George Bernard Shaw observed in 1912: "It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making another Englishman hate or despise him." By contrast, history can work in Scotland's favor. Whether it's the bleak landscapes, the chilly climate or the austere form of Calvinism that took hold in the 16th century, there's a serious strain to the Scottish character—at least as perceived by the English. Try hard enough, and it becomes possible to link Brown with a Scottish intellectual tradition that produced the economist Adam Smith, the intellectual father of free-trade theory, and his friend the Enlightenment philosopher David Hume, who strived to reconcile morality and the market. Besides, lodged in the British subconscious is a memory of a time when the Scots were competent tightwads who ran the British Empire. The English may have planted the flags, but it was Scots who ran the banks and funded the building of the railways. No matter that two iconic Scottish businesses, the Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS, needed rescue by the government after some reckless lending; a reputation for prudence, Brown's old watchword, clings. One recent poll found that a Scottish voice scored highest with audiences for trustworthiness. (Opposition leader David Cameron, for his part, comes from southeast England, but his posh accent defies regional definition and conjures an even more politically treacherous and nuanced area than geography: class.)
Brown's success brings its own danger. Hailed as the supercerebral savior of the world banking system, he is rising in self-confidence and losing some of those glum, recession-friendly traits. "One thing that people will have noticed about Gordon Brown is that—perhaps because he's operating in difficult territory—he's smiling a lot more and looking a lot more relaxed," says John Curtice, an authority on British politics at Glasgow's Strathclyde University. In recent weeks, he's cracked the occasional smile and tried humor at press conferences. Worse, his economic plans involve tax cuts and a public spending spree any good Scottish Calvinist would abhor. So while he praises the virtues of free trade, he also quotes with approval John Maynard Keynes, who—dare we say—was an Englishman. There go the poll numbers.