Cometh The Hour

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It was Gordon Brown's big day, the launch of his campaign to replace Britain's outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair. Any serious contenders had already hung up their gloves, unwilling to challenge the heavyweight politician Blair once dubbed the "great clunking fist."

Brown's prize was certain; his campaign would turn into a cross-country victory tour. Yet he arrived at the London launch venue not in pomp and splendor but by crowded Tube train. "There was a classic British silence on board. Nobody stared," says Tom Stoddart, a photographer who traveled with Brown for Time, exclusively chronicling 10 days in his life as Prime Minister-in-waiting. Brown, too, acted as if this were a trip like any other, averting his gaze from a newspaper across the aisle emblazoned with his own unsmiling face.

Until June 27, when Blair stands down, Britain effectively has two premiers: one traveling the world to bid farewell, his successor on a meet-the-people mission as he prepares for power.

Stoddart, who also accompanied Blair on his election campaign in 1997, observes: "Brown is going to be a very different sort of leader. He spends a lot of time listening to people one-to-one. Blair was more hit-and-run." The photographer has watched the outgoing Chancellor relax into his new role, but says there are still limits to his patience with the imagemakers assisting him: "Whenever they come at him with a comb, he's like a young child and bears their attentions for a while before ruffling his hand through his hair."