Brown pessimistic about world’s financial future

The world is heading for serious financial problems, former prime minister Gordon Brown has warned.

He told The Guardian: “We are in danger of sleepwalking into a future crisis. There is going to have to be a severe awakening to the escalation of risks, but we are in a leaderless world.”

Mr Brown added that the global cooperation which helped to avoid a second Great Depression had been replaced by a world in which countries had retreated into nationalism.