FOR such a proud politician, convinced like many others of the rightness of his policies, it is something of a revelation to hear Gordon Brown open up about his failings while in power.
Apart from the personal fears for his eyesight and what are expected to be harrowing details of the loss of his daughter Jennifer, the initial extracts from his autobiography about how the former Prime Minister sees himself are the most insightful.
At times, his memoirs reads as if he is on the psychiatrist’s chair, trying to sort out in his own mind how it all went wrong in 2010; attempting 10 years after the event to put the jigsaw pieces together.
He suggests he is out of kilter with the age of modern politics, railing against social media, which to him seems more about insulting your opponent than engaging in the honest exchange of ideas.
People who have known Mr Brown personally have often privately said the most frustrating thing about him during his time in power was that, while he could be charming, funny and empathic, he too rarely showed this side of his personality in public. Very often instead, we got the gruff, socially awkward, Gordon, who bellowed at those closest to him and occasionally threw a mobile phone out of frustration.
Of course, his book does not only focus on the negative. He lists his achievements in and out of government from making the Bank of England independent and introducing tax credits to rejecting the euro and, of course, helping Scotland stay in the Union.
Interestingly, he says “taming globalisation,” so that it meets the needs of ordinary working people, remains the challenge of the age.
“The British people want someone, somehow to protect them from what they see as akin to a runaway train. They are, I believe, yearning for something different. There is an impatience for change. A new generation has a right to dream and to hope and we have a responsibility to respond.”
As Mr Brown talks of “something different” and goes on to pit a progressive outlook against what he terms Thatcherite “neoliberalism,” one gets the impression that the former party leader is revising New Labour and Blairism, seen as the heir to Lady T, and might even be softening to Jeremy Corbyn’s socialist outlook.
Yet humility is such a rare quality in politicians, we should appreciate it when it is given.
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