My Life, Our Times by Gordon Brown - review

When Gordon Brown asked me to return from Brussels to join his government in 2008, it was after two decades during which we had veered from being blood brothers to sworn enemies. But I barely hesitated. He remained a giant figure of politics and I was glad of the rapprochement.

He had already changed the economic outlook and credibility of the Labour Party. His 10 years as Chancellor saw sustained growth which the government was able to channel into unprecedented investment in schools and hospitals, virtually full employment and the alleviation of poverty at home and in Africa.

He will rightly be remembered for his and Alistair Darling’s decisive intervention to prevent Britain’s banks going over a cliff, taking the rest of the UK economy with them. He made mistakes in his handling of the public sector deficit — and he must share some blame for the original lighter-touch regulation of the banks — but Brown’s overall response to the crisis, and the global leadership he showed throughout, helped save us from a 1930s depression. This book is a timely reminder of this recent history.

The even bigger achievement is that in so many ways Britain became a much better place after 13 years of New Labour government and the credit for this electoral and policy success must generously be given to both Tony Blair and Brown. Together they had argued passionately for and delivered a “new politics”, a cross-class alliance of conscience and reform instead of the activist-driven party which had become so detached from the everyday priorities and aspirations of Labour voters.

Blair is rightly credited with crafting New Labour’s vision and presentation with a skill and conviction not matched since in Britain. Brown stressed its moral dimension. Labour conveyed a strength of communitarian values — our “social-ism” — that would make the New Labour government very different to the Conservatives, with a belief in equality of opportunity in contrast to Thatcherism’s narrow individualism.

Yes, we imagined by tackling child and pensioner poverty we would automatically narrow inequality, but it was a period which lifted everyone’s boat. Without any shadow of doubt, had the exceptional partnership of this duo endured throughout our time in government, the country would have benefited even more than it did.

Brown reveals in his memoir that for him the turning point came after Blair won the party leadership, going back over the well-trodden territory of the alleged succession “deal” between them and Brown’s claim that Blair “guaranteed” to him that he would be running economic and social policy in a future Labour government (presumably leaving Blair to make the tea and fight the occasional war). This not only gnawed away at the government of which we were part —sowing divisions over policy and personnel — but, judging by this memoir, has gnawed away at Brown ever since.

An angry focus on Blair and his departure led Brown and his aides to distance themselves from New Labour rather than think through where they could take the project next after Brown’s ascent.

The consequence was that the man who had such a powerful agenda as Chancellor was left without a programme of equivalent force when he finally assumed the highest office.

Too often, government looked like a mish-mash of announcements designed to please Guardian readers while continuing to curry favour with the Daily Mail’s Paul Dacre, with whom Brown has maintained an oddly close relationship. Political calculation took over from iron conviction, resulting first in the fiasco of the “election that never was” after he entered No 10 in 2007 and then in a slow downward drift until the financial crash rekindled the old Brown qualities. But by then the public had lost their initial belief in his strength.