UK PM’s wife’s profile rises as she blogs and tweets her way through G8 summit

UK PM’s wife ups profile

L’AQUILA, Italy — The wife of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has kept a blog of her activities on the sidelines of the G-8 Summit, stepping up attempts to boost her public profile while her husband’s popularity is plummeting.

As the summit wrapped up Friday, Sarah Brown offered readers updates on topics ranging from her lunch to maternal mortality and food security.

Many political watchers say it’s no coincidence the former public relations executive has increased her profile as her husband struggles against the main opposition Conservative Party in the polls.

She appeared with thousands of revelers in London’s annual gay pride march earlier this month, went to Los Angeles for a health summit and appeared at the Glastonbury music festival to promote safer childbirth. This led Britain’s The Guardian newspaper to suggest that she had been “recently appointed as the prime minister’s special envoy to Planet Normal.”

Her G-8 blog described lunch in Rome, museum visits, afternoon tea and an audience with the Pope.

But they also include details of a previously closely guarded home life with the British leader. In one post, she mentions that she and Brown snatched a moment to call their youngest son, 2-year-old Fraser. The couple also have another son, John, 5.

She also mentions that the police barracks she stayed in with her husband were more comfortable than imagined, adding that a stuck lift led the wives to “be super healthy” and use the stairs.

Her account on the Flickr photo-sharing Web site includes snaps of the wives’ “tour of the beautiful basilica gardens” in Rome, while she used her Twitter account Friday to say she hoped there would be “no veal served at lunch again,” as the ardent animal rights supporter had already declined it twice while in Italy.

In another blog post, she mentions receiving a message at the same time as French leader Nicolas Sarkozy’s wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, while both were at dinner, saying their husbands’ meal had ended — prompting both to hurry back to the L’Aquila barracks.

It might also have been such a post that prompted a comment from The Times that Mrs. Brown had “ensured at least some advances in technology, if not feminism, by using the latest online trends to tweet and blog.”

A Daily Mail columnist suggested, meanwhile, that Britain’s first lady “has seamlessly morphed from frumpy silent consort to a woman with a hot diary and 300,000 fans following her as she enthusiastically documents her new life.”

On the Web: www.sarahbrowng8.wordpress.com