James Macintyre’s biography of former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown arrives as Britain is indulging a soft-focus nostalgia for the 1990s and 2000s. Oasis have reformed, Gladiators is back on TV and teenagers are buying low-rise jeans, cargo trousers and baby tees on resale websites.
Labour is back in power, too, and Macintyre’s serious reassessment of Brown might be expected to ride some of that wave. But the book has been partly eclipsed by renewed scrutiny of Peter Mandelson, amid fresh revelations from the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Mandelson pops up throughout the book, with Macintyre recounting the pair’s “love-hate” relationship — a friend in Mandelson’s circle claimed he “made” Brown by promoting him in the early years of New Labour; he cried when Brown resigned as prime minister. It was Brown who brought Mandelson back from the political wilderness, elevating him to the House of Lords and making him business secretary in 2008.
These pages conjure a portrait of Brown that is sober, admiring and ultimately persuasive, even when it acknowledges his flaws. He emerges as a politician of seriousness and a man of deep principle, lacking in vanity, uninterested in gaining personal wealth and driven by an extreme work ethic that his staff struggled to keep up with.
Politics, for Brown, was not a route to celebrity or financial gain but a vocation. Macintyre presents him as an intellectual bruiser. But his shortcomings are not airbrushed away and the man himself is “acutely aware of those flaws, both real and perceived”, he says. Brown never possessed the personal touch of his more charismatic contemporaries and he struggled to connect emotionally with voters.
Where Tony Blair charmed and persuaded, Brown harangued and instructed. He inspired loyalty among a tight inner circle and exasperation beyond it. Macintyre does not deny this, instead treating it as the price of a temperament ill-suited to retail politics but well-suited to moments of national emergency.
Mission and misjudgments
Macintyre, an evident admirer of Brown, catalogues his significant achievements as chancellor: Bank of England independence, the minimum wage, tax credits, Sure Start and his push for debt relief for the world’s poorest nations. Together, these measures lifted millions out of poverty.
One former adviser notes it is “very important” people don’t assume this happened automatically because Labour was in power. It was because the party “had a chancellor who was hell-bent that it should”. His reluctance to challenge City bankers with regulation more forcefully, or to voice public doubts over Iraq, are presented as misjudgments. Will his promotion of Mandelson be added to the list of regrets in years to come as police investigate his relationship with Epstein?
Chapter 15, bluntly titled “Saving the World”, makes the central case for Brown to be regarded as one of the world’s great statesmen. As his popularity with the British public was dropping, Brown played the decisive role in coordinating the global response to the 2008 financial crash. In a meeting of G20 leaders to discuss the crisis, the book recounts the then-French president Nicolas Sarkozy saying: “Let’s just be honest: in this room no one has a plan.” Barack Obama then taps the microphone, leans forward and says: “Gordon’s got a plan.”
Saviour of the world?
By ordering the recapitalisation of the banks, Brown prevented the collapse of the world financial system and saved economies from plunging into depression.
Macintyre’s conclusion is implicit. In his closing chapters, he notes that Brown, now in his seventies, is still working to improve lives as UN education envoy. In an age when British voters are increasingly sceptical of politicians, with scandals dogging Tory and Labour administrations alike, Power with Purpose is a reminder of what politics looks like when practised as duty rather than performance.
Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose by James Macintyre is out now (Bloomsbury, £25)
