- The Guardian, Thursday 13 May 2010
Gordon Brown saying farewell to staff at Downing Street. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian
It was daylight when I got there and it must have been around 4pm. I was taken into what they call the "war room", which is the massive room just before Brown's office in No 12 Downing Street.
Everybody you see in the pictures was just hanging around. Essentially they were just waiting, waiting to see the results of the Lib Dem/Tory negotiations. It was just a waiting business.
Brown was in his office writing notes to Cameron, short notes on headed paper. They were sort of "here you are, welcome to the set-up" notes to his successor. Mandelson, Campbell, Ed Balls and others were all there. There were pictures drawn by his children hanging on the walls. The children, as we all know, are a very important part of his life.
The atmosphere in the room was surprisingly light-hearted, but very, very tense. If you can imagine those two things hanging at the same time. They were all making jokes, repeating anecdotes about things that had happened, incidents on international visits such as mistaking diplomats for other people. They were very light little stories that they all knew and they all obviously enjoyed. So they were having quite a good time laughing, which was really just to keep the tension down, I think, while we were waiting for this phone call.
Then it came. And there was silence. The whole place fell completely silent.
Brown answered the phone, and we could hear him saying: "Nick, Nick. I can't hold on any longer. Nick. I've got to go to the palace. The country expects me to do that. I have to go. The Queen expects me to go. I can't hold on any longer." Presumably Clegg was trying to get him to not go to the palace while he extracted some more concessions from Cameron. I assume.
Those people who could were listening in to the conversation via other phones. It was very, very quiet.
Then that phone call ended and Brown, basically, said: "Whatever happens, I am going to go to the palace."
Nick Clegg phoned again a few minutes later and must have said: "OK right. Go to the palace if you have to."
So he did.
Brown came out into the war room where all the civil servants and all his political staff were, to say goodbye. He hugged everybody. There were lots of tears, because it was the end of an era. People were emotional. The tension had been terrific, really. Then the doors opened and the children came running in, completely oblivious to all of this.
They were shouting "Daddy. Daddy". The littlest one was saying, you know like little children do, 'Daddy, Daddy, you know everything" – very very sweetly, and totally unscripted.
He hugged the children, then he put them up on the desk so they could see everyone gathered. There were a lot of tears in the room by then.
He walked along the whole of the corridor outside between No 12, going past the doorway to No 11 to No 10. The foyer of No 10 was lined with civil servants, all of them applauding as he walked through.
I went through in front. Then Brown came through with Sarah. The children had gone on ahead.
He shook hands with people and acknowledged their applause. He shook the hands of everyone in the hallway.
And then he sort of braced himself. And the door was opened. And out he went.
It was all pretty touching. You couldn't not be emotional. It was a historic moment. But it was also a deeply personal moment for the man himself.