Heath resigned after failing to win an overall majority, and Harold Wilson returned as Labour leader of a minority government that would need to call a further election in the autumn. Over the summer Brown had the chance to stand for selection as Labour candidate in Edinburgh South, but backed off. In the General Election of October 1974, the Labour candidate there failed to win the seat. Gordon Brown was left wondering 'what if'.

He would now have to wait for another election (which might be years off) and meanwhile he had further sight problems, and an operation on his right eye, which might have left him blind. When he came out of hospital he seemed very low and had started smoking twenty cigarettes a day. He commissioned journalists, politicians, writers and lecturers to contribute essays to what was called the 'Red Paper on Scotland', a publication that was successful in generating serious discussion about a leftward leaning future for Scotland and which was quite widely read. In his introduction, 'The Socialist Challenge', Gordon Brown identified "Scotland's real problems - our economy and unacceptable level of unemployment, chronic inequalities of wealth and power and inadequate social services." To combat these problems Brown advocated government control of the economy: a planned economy that would involve more nationalisation. Addressing inequalities could not be left to entrepreneurs. Capitalism, in his view at the time, had failed. The private ownership of industry got in the way of building a planned and just society.

At this stage, Gordon Brown's views embraced a form of Marxism, and in Scotland - where the Labour party was traditionally leftward leaning - his well-crafted views attracted support. Both in his studies of Scottish socialist heroes, and in the solutions he proposed, he seemed to be in tune with traditional feelings in Labour's Scottish heartland. The party for its part could see that Brown had real ability, but support was not unanimous. To some he seemed somehow soft, to some too intellectual and, in the nature of politics and its rivalries, he sustained some harsh attacks and criticisms. He responded by thoroughness and sheer hard work.

In 1976 he was finally nominated as the prospective candidate for Edinburgh South, a Conservative seat. Then the next year, after a convincing speech on devolution at the Scottish Labour Party conference, he was elected to Labour's Scottish executive. He also positioned himself into closer involvement with people like John Smith, who was a potential (and in the end an actual) Party leader.

In 1978, although he had already been nominated as a prospective candidate for the 'unsafe' Edinburgh South, he was approached about standing for Labour in a by-election in Hamilton, already a Labour seat (where the incumbent had died). It would, though, have involved Brown in a considerable battle with other Labour aspirants, and potential blood-letting, and in the end - once again - he withdrew his interest. In the event this was to lose him 5 years in Parliament. Some felt that he lacked decisiveness at critical moments and the courage to drive home possible advantages. He rationalised by saying he should 'be loyal to the people in Edinburgh South.'

That summer a personal relationship also ended, and at Westminster James Callaghan had taken over from Harold Wilson as Prime Minister, and the nation veered like a drunk towards the 'winter of discontent' of 1978-79. The political crisis was a disaster for Labour, and opinion polls predicted a victory for Margaret Thatcher whenever a general election finally came. In such a political climate, Gordon Brown's chances in the already Conservative Edinburgh South seemed forlorn. Once again the possibility of a safer seat, in Leith, came up but - uncertain of the outcome - Brown declined it. Instead, he threw himself into an impending referendum battle over devolution.

Then in May 1979 a General Election was finally called. Brown waged a campaign full of well-researched facts and figures, but he seems to have misjudged the national mood (even in Scotland) and the widespread repudiation of the strikers. He offered no prospect of increasing control over militant trade unions, or reining in their picketing and unofficial strikes. He was defeated, and the Labour Party was defeated, as Margaret Thatcher swept to power with a majority of 43 seats.

He had immersed himself in provincial politics, and a socialist mindset and world-view… but the world itself beyond the local precinct of Scottish Labour had moved on. Brown had missed the tidal change (or would not swim with it), and the mood of many people; and the defeat seemed baffling and discouraging.

So from 1979 Gordon Brown returned to his lecturing with the WEA and Glasgow College of Technology; and got work as well as a junior researcher with Scottish Television. He would continue to consolidate his (rather provincial) powerbase with the Scottish Labour party, and await a future Conservative defeat, while the national party chose Michael Foot as leader and thereby contributed to what was to be 18 long years in the wilderness for Labour.

Amid the political in-fighting and fall-out that convulsed Labour at the time, with the neo-Marxist Militant Tendency struggling to capture the party's soul (or hijack it), Brown aligned himself more as an 'ethical socialist' than a Marxist, which brought him into tensions with hard-liners within the Scottish Party like George Galloway. He seemed to steer himself towards the party 'mainstream', whether from ideological belief, or a political sense that factions would face marginalisation. At the same time, if he was to secure a safer Parliamentary seat, he needed the support of trade unions who often ran constituency parties like their own fiefdoms (or at least, wielded significant influence). Gordon Brown offered to train union officials in how to handle the media effectively, working closely with the amenable Jimmy McIntyre, of the Transport and General Workers' Union. In return, in 1983, McIntyre supported his candidature in the safe Labour seat of Dunfermline East. It was agreed that Brown - who had been elected the Scottish Party's vice-chairman in 1982, and its chairman in 1983 - was the right candidate. Other challengers were seen off and the seat was his.

A General Election was called for June 1983. Once again Gordon Brown seemed to misread the mood and direction of the wider nation at large. He was convinced that high unemployment (three million people) and cuts in public spending would turn people against Margaret Thatcher. What he failed to adequately grasp was that Thatcher's analysis had strengths as well as weakness, and that the middle-class (much more influential outside Scotland) still supported Thatcher for the drop in inflation, the Conservative restraints on the unions, and the willingness of the majority to countenance harsh medicine providing their own jobs were secure.

Brown in contrast still believed in a planned economy and nationalisation, with plenty of central control, to channel resources into health and education, the great ideals of the post-war Attlee years. Social justice meant destroying inequalities and re-distributing wealth. Privatisation was anathema. Wealth creation generated by individuals free of social responsibilities and controls: that still seemed amoral at best to Gordon Brown, and - as an objective of Conservative policy - just a smokescreen for greed and selfishness.

Michael Foot, the Labour leader, promised re-nationalisation in a manifesto that his shadow cabinet colleague Gerald Kaufman dubbed 'the longest suicide note in history'. Buoyed by Britain's victory in the Falklands, and exploiting the still-haunting memory of the 'winter of discontent', Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives stormed back to power once more with an increased majority of 144 seats.

However, in June 1983, Gordon Brown finally had his parliamentary seat at Westminster. The provincial politician had gone national. His party was a party in defeat, but he was now an MP and could start to direct his energy, his experience, and his intellect to the national rather than the provincial stage. Years of hard work and grinding attention to detail appeared to have paid off.

What of human relationships? It's not the intention of this website to indulge in prurient intrusion. Gordon had a number of relationships with women over the years. The impression people gained was that politics was his driving interest, and relationships tended to get fitted around that. So women who wanted too much attention might not really work. Certainly in these years he seemed to dismiss the 'need' to share his life too deeply with a woman. Some have read into this a reluctance to open up to too much vulnerability. Control, and the appearance of self-confidence, and intellectual autonomy: any of these might have made personal interactions problematical. But more likely, it could have been simply the driven demands of political life. There is little doubt about the driven workloads he set himself: his lifestyle could be frenetic. Too much emotional commitment at this time might have been considered a distraction from the intellectual primacy of his political beliefs and personal ambition to bring those beliefs to some practical reality.