Support melts away for wax PM
2008-05-15 07:13
London - Embattled British Prime Minister Gordon Brown received yet another blow on Wednesday as the public voted by a landslide to keep him out of London's Madame Tussauds waxwork museum.
Brown's office failed to respond to requests for a sitting, so the tourist attraction asked punters whether it was worth them bothering to make a model to put alongside other world leaders.
And 83.8% of voters, drawn from museum visitors and online supporters, gave Brown the thumbs down. Some 5 308 people told Madame Tussauds not to bother, while 1 025 people (16.2%) said he should be immortalised in wax.
"By a convincing consensus he is duly voted out of Madame Tussauds, becoming the first incumbent prime minister not to be featured in the attraction for over 150 years," the London tourist magnet said.
Madame Tussauds chiefs originally stalled on making a waxwork of Brown when he took over from Tony Blair last June, as he was not elected into office and had mooted calling a snap election. Models can take up to six months to make.
When some visitors then asked where the 57-year-old Scot was, Madame Tussauds decided to press Downing Street for a sitting in March - to no avail.
And now it's too late to change their minds, the tourist attraction insisted.
"Even if Downing Street came calling we will stand firmly by the public's decision," a Madame Tussauds spokesperson told AFP.
"In our daily exit surveys, guests were in two minds and in our recent guest feedback there's lacklustre interest in seeing Gordon Brown," he added.
"With all of the figures it's all about people power, about what they want to see in the attraction."
However, if Brown won the next general election, Madame Tussauds, whose policy is to include every serving elected British prime minister, would then ask again.
The Madame Tussauds snub piles on the misery for the PM.
His governing Labour Party suffered its worst poll defeat in 40 years in May 1 local elections.
An opinion poll out Thursday put the party on 26%, the lowest since poll records began in the 1930s.
- SAPA