The tale is told how Gordon Brown got so immersed in a political discussion during a car journey, that when the car stopped, he didn't think, but opened a door into oncoming traffic. The door was torn away, but happily Brown was unscathed. On another car journey with a group of friends and guests, Brown put on his headphones and proceeded to listen to a CD while everyone else was chatting around him. It took his wife, Sarah, to advise him of the impoliteness. Gordon Brown, in short, is in a world of his own. He is an eccentric who is obsessed with politics, arguably at the expense of human contact.

Many questions will be asked of this remote and cerebral person as he approaches the task of leading a country. The business community will have some specific requirements about his attitudes to old re-distributionist Labour Party policies. The electorate will ask if they can get on with him, if they like him. The Labour Party diehards will want to know if he can win them an election.

What none can doubt is that Brown has been champing at the bit of power for a decade and, when Blair's time of departure came, the party had little choice but to put their eggs in his basket. His success in running the economy made that virtually certain.

Yet he can perhaps count himself lucky that he had a chance to be in this position. For few politicians as dominant as Tony Blair would have allowed Brown such a leash. Blair gave Brown immense power over policy, but the Chancellor was never satisfied and has been moaning about Blair for a decade. In business, the chairman would have sacked him years ago. But few directors have as complex a relationship as the prime minister had with his Chancellor.

Indeed, if we wanted to be charitable, we might well look back on this period as New Labour's Golden decade, where Blair was allowed to exercise his competence in presentation and leadership while Brown developed the essentials of policy. Brown's obsession with absolute power, rather than Blair's dissatisfaction with Brown's policies, ultimately left them warring. And that was before the war in Iraq finally upset for good the balance of their relationship.

Brown has now worn his party into submission, and no-one has challenged him. The result is an unsatisfactory "self-election" campaign, which, like a Stalinist party power putsch, has no opposition, no alternative proposition. The party has gone from overwhelmingly Blairite (where Brownites had a small showing) to universally Brownite in a matter of weeks.

This demonstrates so well New Labour's hunger for power. It has learnt from the 18 wilderness years, that dissension spells political doom and they are better to rally round a man without charisma or political attractiveness than embark on clear discussion of policy that might reveal the differences we all know to be lying beneath the surface. It may sound bizarre for so awkward a performer as Brown to be celebrated as a "personality", but Labour knows that an election is only two years away and that they face a revived Conservative Party under a charismatic new leader. Charisma is the order of the day, and it will be up to Brown to show that he can cut the mustard at the front of the stage, rather than in the backroom as he has done up to now.

The Scottish leader will be given his honeymoon, of course. But what do we know about Brown's attitudes to business and what can business expect?

Starting with Brown's own personal make-up, it is well known that he is the son of the manse. What is less well known is that his mother comes from a family of entrepreneurs in Scotland. Indeed, she did a stint for the family construction business, called John Souter of Aberdeenshire, in due course becoming one of its directors. 

Brown has spoken often of his admiration for people that work hard and create their own opportunities. Entrepreneurial people break the mould by their individual endeavours, believes Brown. Hard work is very much at the core of his thinking—each time we met, the Chancellor would ask how my work was going. Given this Protestant ethic, the small business approach has a particular resonance for him.

This has a corollary in Brown's thinking about large business, of which he is suspicious, perhaps even uncomprehending. The dichotomy is sometimes made between Blair, the champion of big business, and Brown a champion of the small business. This can lead Brown to permit, indeed encourage, some apparently very hostile action. For example, the so-called £5bn raid on the pension funds, which occurred very early in his tenure, will have been fuelled by a view that City firms were bloated and could sustain a hit. Brown was looking for funding for his social programmes, in particular the welfare to work scheme, a way of extracting some cash below the radar. The move was devised and largely implemented by Ed Balls, today's City Minister and a likely future Chancellor. It was redistribution by stealth, and the degree to which he's targeted business may be cause for concern.

Disdain for large institutions was also evident in his decision to remove from the Bank of England the authority to regulate the banking system. He perceived the Bank as part of a cosy and self-serving City establishment that had failed to exercise its regulatory power. He blamed the bank for failing to intercept abuses that had crept into the City. Established edifices can expect no mercy from Brown if they under-perform.

As is evident with the creation of the Monetary Policy Committee, Brown also has a penchant for the large and dramatic innovation. Gavyn Davies, the Goldman Sachs partner and one-time Labour adviser, has described Brown as "an interventionist" and it would be surprising if Brown did not want to celebrate his accession to power with some large gesture that he can carry into the next election as a token of what is to come.

Gordon Brown has been able to hold his own at the right hand of the prime minister because the country has enjoyed a decade of economic prosperity. It remains to be seen whether he will be as sure-footed when the economy turns down. His test will come when it is his turn, rather than Blair's, to make the difficult decisions.

Nick Kochan is a writer and co-authored, with Hugh Pym, Gordon Brown: The First Year in Power, published by Bloomsbury.