Gordon Brown
Mistakes I made as the Prime Minister
FORMER PM Gordon Brown has given a brutally honest account of his time in No10 – claiming some successes but lamenting he had failures too.
In a frank new book, the ex-Labour leader tells how he felt he handled the global recession well.
But he admits he “failed to rally the nation” or get across the message that his policies were right and fair.
And he says natural reserve stopped him making a good impression in the age of social media, revealing: “I never mastered the capacity to sculpt my public image in 140 characters.”
Brown’s highly personal recollections are revealed in the memoir My Life, Our Times, out next week.
In the book he also speaks emotionally of a lifelong battle with eyesight problems and his family life, including the devastating loss of 10-day-old daughter Jennifer in 2002.
And he insists the young have “a right to dream” of a better future, saying the last seven years of austerity under the Tories have been a lost age.
He says: “My own biggest regret was that in the greatest peacetime challenge – a catastrophic global recession – I failed to persuade the British people that the progressive policies I pushed for, nationally and internationally, were the right and fairest way to respond. I fell short in communicating my ideas.
“I failed to rally the nation. We won
In a touchy-feely era, leaders speak in personal ways and claim they ‘feel voters’ pain’ ON BEING UNCOMFORTABLE WITH ‘DEMONSTRATIVE’ POLITICIANS
the battle – to escape recession. But we lost the war – to build something better.
“Banking should have been transformed, our international institutions refashioned, inequality radically reversed – and if we are to be properly equipped to face the next crisis this is still the agenda we must pursue.”
Admitting his personality was not particularly suited to that of a modern leader, he goes on: “I wasn’t an ideal fit for an age when the personal side of politics had come to the fore.
“For me, being conspicuously demonstrative is uncomfortable. Reticence was the rule. I was born about 40 years before the World Wide Web, and arrived in Parliament 20 years before the advent of Twitter.
“During my time as an MP I never mastered the capacity to leave a good impression or sculpt my public image in 140 characters.
“Now no politician can succeed without mastering social media – and yet, in it, the prime minister becomes one among millions of voices competing to be heard.”
Brown concedes that the business of politics has shifted dramatically in the past few years. He says: “The modern version of ‘connecting’ seems to increasingly include a public display of emotion, with the latter – authentic or not – seen as evidence of a sincerity required for political success.
“In a far more touchy-feely era, our leaders speak of public issues in intensely personal ways and assume they can win votes simply by telling their electors that they ‘feel their pain’.
“For me, being conspicuously demonstrative is uncomfortable – to the point that it has taken me years to turn to writing this book.
“I fully understand that in a mediaconscious age every politician has to lighten up to get a message across and I accept that, in the second decade of the 21st century, a sense of personal reserve can limit the appeal and rapport of a leader.
“I hope people will come to understand this was not an aloofness or detachment or, I hope, insensitivity or lack of emotional intelligence. To my mind what mattered was not what I said about myself, but simply what our government could do for our country.”
Brown also talks openly about the tragedy of daughter Jennifer, who lived for only 10 days. She died in January 2001 in his and wife Sarah’s arms after a brain haemorrhage.
But he also tells how he and Sarah were never keen to thrust their family into the limelight. The couple were determined their sons John and Fraser, now 14 and 11, would have a private life as “normal children”.
Brown also details the big issues he faced in 10 years as Chancellor under PM Tony Blair, then almost three in the hotseat himself with Alistair Darling at the helm of the Exchequer.
He resigned when the election led to a hung Parliament and was famously photographed walking out of Downing Street for the last time hand in hand with his wife and sons.
Brown, who mixed with world leaders including US president Barack Obama, says: “Taming globalisation – and redirecting it to meet the interests of working people – has been, and still is, the defining political challenge
of our era. It has created millions of winners who have better-paid jobs, higher standards of living and more material possessions than ever.
“But financially it has created millions of losers whose skills and wage expectations cannot compete with cheaper labour economies.
“It is hardly surprising that in the old industrial communities people complain, indeed cry out, that the country is not what it was, that it no longer belongs to them. Understand- ably, they want someone to protect them from what they see as akin to a runaway train.
“The British people, I believe, are yearning for something different.
“There is an impatience for change. A new generation has a right to dream and hope – and we have a responsibility to respond.”
Among the issues the book addresses are making the Bank of England independent in 1997, introducing tax credits, refinancing the NHS with the biggest single tax rise in 2002 and rejecting the euro in 2003.
It also talks about achieving global debt relief for the poor in 2005 and steering the country through the financial crisis of 2007-2008 as many banks worldwide verged on collapse. But Brown concludes: “I started out in politics as an idealist with a strong, perhaps naïve, conviction of what needed to change in Britain.
“Politics, I thought, was more than the art of the possible; it was about making the desirable possible.
“We have now lived through seven years of austerity and face isolation from Europe. Historians will assess these years economically, both for Britain and Europe, as a lost decade.
“And I rue to this day being unable to convince the British people that we had to finish the work of recovery by rebuilding our still unreformed and risk-laden financial system.”
My Life, Our Times by Gordon Brown will be published by The Bodley Head on Tuesday, November 7.
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