Ex-leader cited in U.K. win

Brown’s speech, concession plan seen key in Scottish vote

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and NO campaigner in Scotland's Independence Referendum meets pupils at Kelty Primary school Kelty Scotland Friday Sept. 19, 2014.  Voters in Scotland resoundingly rejected independence in a historic referendum that shook the country to its core.  But No does not mean a return to the status quo. The referendum led to promises of further powers for each of the four nations in the United Kingdom _ a pledge that will change the country forever.  (AP Photo/Garry F McHarg/PA) UNITED KINGDOM OUT NO SALES NO ARCHIVE
Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and NO campaigner in Scotland's Independence Referendum meets pupils at Kelty Primary school Kelty Scotland Friday Sept. 19, 2014. Voters in Scotland resoundingly rejected independence in a historic referendum that shook the country to its core. But No does not mean a return to the status quo. The referendum led to promises of further powers for each of the four nations in the United Kingdom _ a pledge that will change the country forever. (AP Photo/Garry F McHarg/PA) UNITED KINGDOM OUT NO SALES NO ARCHIVE

KIRKCALDY, Scotland -- Dour. Grim. Downright uninspiring. When Gordon Brown ended a disappointing three years as British prime minister in 2010, few would have credited him as the man most likely to swing a popular vote ever again.

Yet the former Labor Party leader and 63-year-old Scot has emerged as the oratorical star of Scotland's Better Together campaign, the man most responsible for persuading wavering voters to stick with the United Kingdom by emphasizing why they should be proud to be British.

The issue at stake -- the defense of his homeland within the United Kingdom -- brought back the passion that his years of government struggle in London had seemed to sap.

His speech to the final anti-independence rally on the eve of Thursday's referendum set social media ablaze with comments that Brown was the man who should have led the pro-union case all along.

Brown "galvanized the campaign. He spoke with authority. He spoke from the heart," said Victoria Honeyman, a politics lecturer at University of Leeds in England.

Ellen Baron, 62, a life-long Labor voter from the Scottish town of Renfrew near Glasgow, said she was certain that Brown had turned the tables on Alex Salmond, the Scottish National Party leader and first minister of the Scottish parliament, who resigned Friday.

"Brown is more than a match for Alex Salmond," she said. "I'm glad he got involved because it added a lot of extra weight to the 'no' side when it looked as though the nationalists were getting somewhere."

In his first comments since the vote, Brown promised in a speech Saturday morning that British leaders would not break their promise to deliver more powers to Scotland. He called for unity and conciliation after the sometimes bitter fight.

"There is a time to fight but there is a time to unite and this is the time for Scotland to unite and see if it can find common purpose and move from the battle ground to the common ground," he said.

Brown said a timetable on more devolution would be followed, vowing that the new "Scotland Act" would be ready by January.

He said the eyes of the world are on British leaders to make sure they deliver, and that the proposals could be supported by both the "yes" and "no" camps in the independence battle.

Political analysts said Brown's bigger role in delivering defeat of the Scottish nationalists was to realize that the pro-independence side could win unless Better Together emphasized positive pride in Britain, not fear of how an independent Scotland might stumble.

And they said his strategic plan was to compel Britain's big three parties -- Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives; Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats; and his own opposition Labor, now led by Ed Miliband -- to offer Scots greater powers of self-rule if they voted no. Had those three parties not agreed to accept Brown's call and make the offer at the eleventh hour, analysts said, Scotland might have won its independence and Cameron, not Salmond, might have been obliged to resign.

"There's a delicious irony in all of this," said John Curtice, politics professor at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. "Brown may have just saved the political skin of David Cameron."

In his speech Wednesday, Brown cast the nationalists as selfish, the union as a band of brothers.

"What kind of message does Scotland send to the world if, tomorrow, we said we are going to give up on sharing, we are going to smash our partnership, we are going to abandon cooperation and we are going to throw the idea of solidarity into the dust? This is not the Scotland I know and recognize," he said during the 13-minute speech without notes.

Since Friday's anti-independence triumph and Salmond's resignation hours later, speculation has mounted that Brown could seek to enter the Scottish parliament and take on Salmond's yet-to-be-named successor. He still holds his seat in the House of Commons in London representing Kirkcaldy, a seaside town where he spent his childhood.

In Kirkcaldy, few expressed surprise that Brown proved such a performer. They've seen his determination up close, going back to his high school days in Kirkcaldy. It was there that Brown, at 16, was blinded in the left eye in a rugby match and came close to losing sight in his right as well. He rebounded from that setback to become rector at the University of Edinburgh before turning to teaching political science, then entering politics.

"The thing about Gordon is, he was always a tremendous speaker when he cared passionately about something. People in England forget that," said Alasdair Campbell, 52, a resident of Kirkcaldy. "They just remember his bad years as prime minister, when he looked like he just didn't want to be there most of the time. We're all expecting him to take over Scotland now that he's got a taste of success again."

Information for this article was contributed by Jill Lawless and Paul Kelbie of The Associated Press.

A Section on 09/21/2014

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