Gordon Brown is the last giant in British politics, last of a long line of Prime Ministers who sought power not so that they could make a fortune on the lecture circuit, but so that they could change society for the better. Their opinions of what “better” looked like varied, but they all shared a commitment and a passion to leave Britain stronger than they found it. Churchill, Wilson, Thatcher, Blair – love them or hate them, their periods in office were influential well beyond the narrow political sphere, each changing the social fabric of the UK and playing a major role on the world stage.
In this memoir, Brown lays out his philosophy for a fairer, more equal society, accepting globalisation as an incontrovertible fact but looking for ways to make it work for the weak as well as the strong, internationalist, and, above all, with the belief that the highest purpose of any politician or government should be to lift children out of poverty and give them the health and educational opportunities to achieve whatever their potential may be. He discusses the policies he put in place to achieve these aims, first as Chancellor, then as Prime Minister, and is as honest about his failures as his successes. He talks about the events, many of them external to the UK or global in nature, that restricted his ability to go at the speed he wished. And he discusses how the job of Prime Minister has changed in the age of 24-hour news where everyone wants a five-second soundbite rather than a considered debate, and where PMs are expected to be the mouthpiece on every policy decision, rather than Cabinet Ministers having responsibility for their own departments. He recognises that this makes the role more Presidential, a change he clearly rues, and that it means that a PM now has to be first and foremost a communicator, even an entertainer, certainly a celebrity, rather than the Chair of a Cabinet of equals. He is honest about his own failings in that respect.
In terms of policy, Brown is the politician I have most admired in my lifetime. It was rare for me ever to disagree with his policies, as Chancellor or PM, and his political priorities are mine too. Not too surprising, perhaps, since we both grew up in the same era, in a Scotland which still valued its place in the Union and which had Calvinism embedded into every aspect of life. Equality through education has been a pillar of Scottish ambition for generations – often mistaken as arising from the country’s socialist tendencies, but in reality more complex than that, rooted more in the Reformation than in revolution. As a son of the Manse, Brown is open about his strong religious beliefs and how they formed his political philosophy and have motivated him throughout his life. He is not, however, a proselytiser – for him, faith is personal but the ideals of faith should be universal. And for Brown, universal means looking beyond borders – he believes that rich countries have a duty to developing nations, especially with regards to ensuring universal access to education for all children. This is a cause to which he still devotes himself long after leaving the main political arena. It was also under Brown that the UK first made a legal commitment to reduce carbon emissions, the first major economy to do so, and which changed the debate from “if” to “when” and “how”.
The book is very much a political memoir. A reader hoping for juicy gossip about the Blair/Brown saga or salacious tidbits about scandals in Westminster will be disappointed. He starts with a quick run-through of his childhood and education, just enough to give the reader an understanding of the foundations on which his lifetime of service is built. He talks of the injury in his youth that left him partially sighted, and how it to some extent limited his career options and has always been a difficulty he has had to work to overcome.
Entering Parliament in 1983, he is fairly brief about the Thatcher years, discussing them only in so far as they led to Brown and Blair developing the political platform which would come to be known as New Labour, or in Blair’s more mystical phrase, the Third Way – a centrist position that attempts to achieve the aims of socialism within a globalised capitalist system. He talks about the famous “deal” the two men made when the then Labour leader John Smith unexpectedly died, that Brown would not stand against Blair for the job of Labour leader but that Blair would hand over to him at some unspecified and frequently disputed point in the future. But though one can metaphorically hear that his teeth are still grinding a little over what he saw as Blair’s refusal to fulfil his part of the deal, he doesn’t dwell on it. He praises Blair’s achievements and recognises his skills as a communicator. To many of us who had waited too long for a Labour government, it seemed they were the ideal combination – Brown with strong roots in the Labour tradition guiding economic and social policy, Blair with the ability to appeal to people who would never have thought of themselves as left-wing, and thus win elections – a thing the leftist purists would do well to remember is essential. The book left me with the impression that Brown still doesn’t fully understand how frustrating many of us found it that their time in office should be marred by a feud over who should be the alpha male.
The bulk of the book, however, is given over to a detailed discussion of the policies he put in place, or tried to, as Chancellor and then as PM. For political geeks (like me), this is fascinating and insightful, although there is not much in it that we didn’t already know. He tells us about the impact of “Events, dear boy, events!”, such as the terror attacks that followed the US-led invasion of Iraq, the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease and the later global banking crash, on his ability to fulfil his agenda. And he finishes with a kind of manifesto for the future, not so much on policy, but on how democracy in our suddenly unstable Union, still wobbling from the impact of Brexit, needs to renew and strengthen itself if it is to be fit to face an uncertain future.
A serious, thoughtful book from a man who still believes that politics can change the world for the better, if we want it to. Both refreshing and depressing to be reminded of how recent it is that we had people of the calibre of Blair and Brown in power, and perhaps a timely call to arms for us to do a better job of picking our future leaders.
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