For a fairer future — Labour, led by experience
The devolution referendums of 1997 transformed Scotland and Wales, but left the English regions governed from Whitehall by default. Six reforms could complete what Brown and Scottish Labour started — and finally answer the West Lothian question with a settlement, not a shrug.
When the pandemic struck, the Treasury reached instinctively for the tools Gordon Brown forged during the financial crisis: wage subsidies, guaranteed lending, state intervention at speed and scale. It is time Labour claimed that intellectual inheritance outright.
Fairness, fiscal discipline, devolution and the life chances of every child — the four convictions that shaped a generation of Labour thinking. We translate them into ten pledges for 2030 and ask the awkward question: which will this government adopt, and which will quietly vanish?
Every Prime Minister since 2007 has governed in the shadow of the man who steadied the banks. Some studied the playbook; some burned it. A scorecard on sixteen years of crisis management — and what it reveals about the current occupant of No. 10.
While British columnists debated his legacy at home, Gordon Brown spent a decade warning the world about Ebola, vaccine inequality and famine — and was usually proven right. Why does the UK press ignore its most experienced internationalist?
Zero-hours rosters and algorithmic shifts have shattered the old assumption of a steady weekly wage. The tax credit architecture built for the 2000s labour market needs rebuilding — and Labour should be the party to build it.
The men and women who ran the banks before 2008 told us they were too clever to be regulated. Today's tech titans make the same claim in subtler language. A Treasury that once tamed the City must now be ready to tame the platforms.
For a decade, 'prudence' was the word deployed to mock Gordon Brown in the Westminster press. From the gold sales to the euro veto, the sneering was relentless. It is time to keep score.
In 1999, Labour promised to end child poverty within a generation — and came closer than any government before or since. With the two-child cap still in force, the question is whether to rebuild the old machinery or design something bolder.
Seven moments in Gordon Brown's life reveal a politician forged by hardship, principle and an unshakeable belief in the power of government. What should today's Labour generation take from that journey?
From the stage of a Kirkcaldy football stadium in 2014 to the campaign trails of today, Gordon Brown has remained Labour's most distinctive voice on the union question. This feature examines whether his brand of pragmatic, patriotic Britishness can rebuild trust among Scottish voters.
As families across Britain continue to grapple with rising bills and squeezed wages, it is worth returning to the economic architecture Gordon Brown built during his decade at the Treasury. These five enduring principles offer a blueprint the present Government would be wise to study.