GORDON BROWN – a comment

I have mixed feelings about Gordon Brown – recognising on one hand his immense contribution to British politics, particularly as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the global financial crisis of 2007 but never forgiving him for his pretensions to the Prime Minister-ship. 

I have recently been rereading Tom Bowen’s Gordon Brown – Prime Minister 
(2004) which starts with an unflattering picture of Brown attending an Italian 
match in Rome with expensive tickets bought by Geoffrey Robinson the then 
rather shady Attorney General in Tony Bliar’s government and goes on to rehearse 
his biography leading up to but not including his time as Prime Minister 
(which came in 2007)

Beyond the Crash – overcoming the first crisis of globalisation Gordon Brown 
(2010) is his rather incestuous account of the global financial crisis.

Why write a book on the financial crisis? Or perhaps more pertinently, why

write another book on the financial crisis when so many accounts of the

events of 2007–2010 have already appeared that there may be little appetite

for more? My case for writing this account is that I was there. If we do not understand fully the biggest economic shock of our generation, then we are destined to repeat its mistakes. I believe a firsthand account can best illuminate how choices (and mistakes) were made.

My case for writing this now is that the crisis is not yet over. If it is to end with a full recovery, we need to learn quickly the lessons of what went so wrong that the global financial system froze, and we need to come to a firm and shared view regarding what we can do to make things right. So, while some will say this is a book written in (extreme) haste that I will repent of at leisure, it is for me a necessary means of provoking a much-needed debate about what I believe is the only way to overcome the disastrous economic collapse: coordinated global action. This book is not, therefore, a comprehensive account of the crisis. But it does cover the misjudgments that brought the crisis about and proposes how best they can be overcome. This is my first attempt at a set of recommendations for the next stage of our economic recovery. As I discuss this book’s content with people across the world I will be ready to learn from their knowledge, to review and amend my recommendations, and to update and reconsider my conclusions.

I am neither a finance expert not a trained economist, but fear of making technical mistakes (of which, I’m sure, this book is full) should not silence us altogether when the task before us is so urgent. We are of course summoned to address many great challenges that arise from the global changes that are shaping our twenty-first century lives—combating global terrorism and nuclear proliferation, and in the wider economy itself, curbing the volatility in oil, food, and commodity prices and fighting climate change with the opportunity that I would like to write about later for a transformation in the way our economies consume energy. But in this book, the priority is to address head-on the new and gnawing insecurity that millions now experience in their daily lives. And so my priorities are jobs and justice. This book is a call for the world to achieve together what we now know is possible in the immediate future: to create and save 50 million jobs worldwide and to lift nearly 100 million people out of poverty. We are on an uneven and hazardous journey whose route and destination should not be left to chance, but must be shaped by our common endeavors and by the values we share in common. And for me at least, the oft-quoted phrase I hear spoken and sometimes use myself of “restoring the global economy to full health” cannot be an accurate description of the outcome we seek without its including millions more hard-working families in decent jobs.

This is my first draft, a work in progress. But of this I am certain: the basic thesis—that global problems need global solutions and that there must be an alternative to a decade of low growth and lost jobs—will withstand the arguments about culpability for the crisis and the questions about specific recommendations. 

I, of course, take full responsibility for the contents of this book. Only I am to blame for any mistakes that I have made and that are inevitable in a project of this speed and scope. I did not start to write until the end of May 2010 and completed the work in the fourteen weeks that followed, alongside my work as a Member of Parliament. It would not have been possible to deliver it on deadline without the prior support I had from all those who served with me in government, and I could not even have contemplated it without the amazing and unsurpassable commitment and loyalty of those who are still assisting me today.

The Court Politics of the Blair Presidency is a lecture given in Australia by 
academic Rod Rhodes in 2005

The lecture covers five topics. First, I document briefly the long-standing claim that post-war Britain witnessed expanding prime ministerial power and the growth of the UK presidency. Second, I turn to the most recent manifestation of this trend - the tales of a Blair Presidency. This story makes three main claims: that there has been a centralisation of coordination, a pluralisation of advice, and the personalisation of elections. Obviously, I draw on the work of academic colleagues, especially where they cite interviews, but I concentrate on the views of practitioners. I rely on the obvious sources of prime ministerial, ministerial and civil servant autobiographies, diaries and memoirs as well as official publications. Many claim there are problems with the evidence of practitioners. As Anthony Mughan (2000: 134) remarks ‘for every “insider” … assertion that prime ministerial government has arrived in Britain, it is possible to find the counter-assertion that cabinet government remains the order of the day’. Such inconsistencies are the puzzle. I compare the several stories and show there is much inconsistency and contradiction. This divergent evidence highlights the paradox between presidential claims and the governance narrative. So, third, I explore the governance paradox - even as people tell tales of a Blair presidency, they recount also stories of British governance that portray it as fragmented and multipolar. In particular, I argue New Labour appears to accept key tenets of the governance narrative. Innovations like joining-up and the reforms at No. 10 recognise the weakness of the centre and fuel claims of the Blair presidency. But New Labour ignores the other half of the governance narrative that stresses interdependence and cooperation, not command and control. So, claims of a Blair presidency founder on policy-making and implementation deficits. Fourth, I argue this paradox reveals the distorting influence that the Westminster Model still exerts on many accounts of British politics. It acts as a smokescreen for the changes in executive politics. Finally, I conclude that Blair is locked into the court politics of Westminster and Whitehall and to complex patterns of domestic and international dependence. The prime minister wins, loses and draws as one might expect given the volatile nature of high politics. Prime ministerial practice is equally varied. And the best way to understand this volatility and variety is through decentered studies of the beliefs and practices of politicians and civil servants

Global Statesman – how Gordon Brown took New Labour to the world 
David Webber (2017)

Despite its focus upon the hand of Gordon Brown in the design and setting of New Labour’s international development policies, Global Statesman is not a biographical account of Brown’s political career. Given his unparalleled position in modern British politics, it is hardly surprising that a number of books are already in print concerning his life and his politics. There are four main dimensions to the literature that focuses upon the life and political career of Gordon Brown.

• the biographical;

• domestic policies as Chancellor;

• what a Brown premiership might look like;

• his brief tenure as prime minister, focusing specifically upon his management of the global financial crisis, including his own assessment of it, and the personal role that he played in dealing with the ‘first crisis of globalisation’.

Each of these accounts – perhaps with the notable exception of William Keegan’s text, and Brown’s own book – focuses upon the sphere of domestic policymaking; paying little attention to Brown’s concern for global poverty, and the role that he carved out for himself in the institutions of international finance to address this. Despite Brown’s obvious concern for poverty both at home and abroad, international development in these accounts is treated as an ‘extra-curricular’ activity, receiving little more than a chapter or in some instances just a few pages of coverage. This, of course, reflects to a certain degree the relatively minor importance afforded to international development in British politics more generally, and the extent to which other events, particularly during

Brown’s premiership, overtook this area of policy. However, to neglect the issues of global poverty when discussing the personality and politics of one of the most powerful and influential figures in the modern era is to ignore an integral part of Brown’s political economy, and one of the very reasons he pursued a career in politics. Unlike other accounts of Gordon Brown, this book does not draw upon clandestine interviews or off-the-record briefi ngs but rather the very public pronouncements of policy made by Brown and his colleagues. While this might diminish the sensationalism and subterfuge that appears in other accounts, it does enable the book to make a more factual, detailed and balanced assessment of the actual policies designed and implemented by Brown during his time as shadow Chancellor, Chancellor and finally prime minister.

In the preparation of this manuscript, thousands of speeches and statements made by senior New Labour offi cials either in Parliament itself or at other events elsewhere in Britain and across the world were read or listened to. Of all of these speeches, it was Brown who, by some distance, delivered the majority. Not only does this reveal the seriousness that he, more than any other senior New Labour figure, afforded matters concerning poverty and development, it also demonstrates just how influential Brown was in designing and implementing this and other areas of government policy. These statements were subsequently scrutinised for both context and content before being woven together to form a narrative of development that could be examined in the light of Brown’s own vision of development. It is this book that, based upon this discourse analysis, provides the critical assessment of the political economy of Brown’s vision to deliver a more socially and economically just world. In pursuing this line of inquiry, this book proceeds by mapping out the strategic terrain that Gordon Brown and New Labour were faced with during the final stages of the party’s modernisation and ascent towards government. 

For Gordon Brown, his commitment to addressing global poverty was borne out of a childhood spent growing up in his father’s manse in Kirkcaldy and driven by a deep compassion for the most vulnerable in society. Brown’s childhood experiences as a Presbyterian ‘son of the manse’ imprinted upon him the virtues of Christian socialism and instilled in the future Chancellor, prime minister and leader of the Labour Party a burning desire for social justice.

The Deal is a BBC series aired in 2002 with David Morrisey and Michael Sheen

Political Memoirs Andrew Gamble (1994) demonstrates, somewhat caustically, the dangers of that brand of memoir.