FLAWS OF A POLITICAL GIANT

by Gordon Brown Bodley Head 512pp £25 The Week Bookshop £22 (incl. p&p)

Gordon Brown was a “giant figure” of British politics, said Peter Mandelson in the London Evening Standard. As chancellor, he presided over a decade of “sustained growth” that was channelled into “unprecedented investment in schools and hospitals”. As prime minister, his “decisive” global leadership during the financial crisis was critical in preventing a 1930s depression. But his fury at Tony Blair for failing to honour his alleged promise to let Brown run economic and social policy, and to step down at some point in his second term, gnawed away at Brown to such an extent that he lacked a serious programme of his own when eventually he did assume the highest office. And in these memoirs, published seven years after his 2010 election defeat to David Cameron, it gnaws away at him still. The book is largely dedicated to defending his record, but it’s a pity he didn’t devote more space to the shortcomings that not only hindered him as a politician, but which led to Labour abandoning the “modernising agenda” that underpinned its success under Blair.

The impression Brown gives throughout this frustrating book is that he is a “stranger to responsibility, let alone repentance”, said Philip Collins in The Times. He refuses to accept blame for any of the charges routinely laid against him. He insists he did “have a plan” on arriving in No. 10 – although he never spells it out. He claims he never actively plotted against Blair and that the “flunked election” of 2007 was due to a lack of sufficient funding, not – as is widely believed – to his own indecisiveness. Brown admits to only one failing of note – that he wasn’t “touchy-feely” enough for the modern age. Even here, he “gives the impression that the fault lies with democracy rather than him”. Brown may find it consoling to think his only weakness was presentational, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. “He should have derived enormous satisfaction from being one of the most formidable chancellors Britain has ever seen.” Instead, he devoted a vast amount of time and energy to the “destructively obsessive” pursuit of a job that, when he finally got it, “overwhelmed him”. Still, Brown is “miles ahead of anyone you can currently name in office at Westminster”, said David Hare in The Guardian. His central personality flaw is that he was perceptive about “everything except himself”. But this very weakness lends him “an everyman dimension that is unexpectedly moving”. My Life, Our Times is an affecting work that helps humanise this most “frustrating” of politicians.