Review – Gordon Brown’s seven (plus a few more) ways to change the world

You don’t have to agree with Gordon Brown to gain great knowledge and pleasure from Seven Ways to Change the World. Which is just as well.

I first met Gordon in 1972. It was in the Beer Bar of Edinburgh University Student’s Union. I was a guest of the Union President, aspiring Tory politician Ken Ross, who went on to a successful career as a distinguished Sheriff on the Galloway bench. I had a walk on role in politics in the 80s and 90s. Gordon became Prime Minister. There you go. 

I often reflect that Gordon got the worst of it, as he never seemed to enjoy his success after prising the keys to Number 10 from Tony Blair. Meantime, Ken and I have revelled in our comparative failures. 

Even in the early arena of student politics of 1972 Gordon was determined to make a splash. There was an aura of the Paris evenements of 1968 about the shoulder-length-haired agitator. He was campaigning to break the mould of student politics – standing for election as Edinburgh’s Student Rector on a takeover bid to bend the University Court to his youthful will.

Now, when other former Prime Ministers are feathering their consultancy nests with pals’ money, supporting lavish lifestyles and changing the world with Global Institutes, Faith alone not having proven a reliable fundraiser, or making alarming occasional appearances – “Oh, yes” – like ghostly Remainers of ages past, Gordon has written a hefty and well researched book.

First off, the structure of Seven Ways is a bit chaotic. The book is very up to date – a good thing. It smells of wet printers’ ink. An introduction focusing on the pre-Covid world has been bolted onto the beginning to add topicality, leading into an introductory section on healthcare and preventing future global pandemics. 

The prevention of irreversible climate change, eliminating nuclear weapons, extending education opportunities, creating sustainable economic growth, abolishing tax havens and reversing the rising penchant for populist nationalism to a more benign mush of global patriotism, topics which follow on the Covid analysis, are more enduring objectives. 

Why do they play second fiddle to Covid? It will, like viruses which have emerged from time-to-time over thousands of years, eventually morph from pandemic to an irritating endemic disease – always with us with occasional eruptions. It is not the number one issue requiring structural global change, but, as the most topical, fronts the book.

One common thread weaves its way throughout. The answer to failing organisations – an EU that got in the way of vaccinating its population, a World Bank which is not investing enough to educate the underprivileged, a UN that has not brokered nuclear disarmament, a World Health Organisation whose programmes are failing, an IMF that is not doing enough to unwind crazy global balance sheets in danger of collapse (the list is endless) – is to build again. But, this time, build bigger and better.

The hubris of the book is that Gordon genuinely seems to think that is what he could do – if he were in charge and people would only bend to his omniscient will. If the idiots could only see. This is all well and good if a clear pathway to change was laid out, but there is a regular descent into banality and wishful thinking.

Examples such as this are scattered through the book: “Not only should international regulators have agreed better ways of detecting and preventing future crises, but more time should have been spent on how best to prepare to solve them if and when they happened”. What? That simple? This startling insight appears on page 95 in a section dealing with economic crises.

Cue Robert Redford, presidential hopeful in the 1972 film, The Candidate. His vacuous but seductive slogan, “There must be a better way”, is irritatingly parodied in different words in almost every chapter. The “better way” is, of course, Gordon’s way. We are tangentially reminded that he saved the world from the financial crisis of 2008.

A New Kind of Economy calls for focus on changing the shape of work, waking up from the illusion that risk has been somehow eliminated, the hazards of emergent shadow banks and the need to establish early warning systems. 

Gordon’s modus operandi, as it was when he stood at the dispatch box as Chancellor of the Exchequer, is to bludgeon the reader into awed submission with blizzards of statistics. 

Page 119, describing a G20 initiative for post Covid recovery, centres on a required boost to the world economy of £2.5 trillion, called for by the IMF. But the World Bank insists between £175bn and £750bn a year is needed, and Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) of £650bn with another potential £650bn have been agreed by the new Biden administration. It is not enough. 

Impressed? Overwhelmed more like. By now the average reader will have applied a cold compress to a fevered brow and headed for the booze cabinet. 

Section 4, A Global New Green Deal, sets out 5 routes to a zero-carbon future. So, sneakily we are now up to Twelve Ways to Save the World – and counting. There is a useful rehearsal of the climate conferences that have paved the way to the COP 26 UN climate change conference in Glasgow in November. 

A policy of carbon pricing is explored, but again dribbles away to wishful thinking on page 159: “We could also build a consensus on what is fair, not just within countries, but across countries.” This simply isn’t going to happen. 26 Cops and probably counting. Big government solutions are pie in the sky. 

On to ‘Education, Unlocking the World’s Potential’. Gordon Brown – a “son of the manse” and beneficiary of an old-fashioned Scottish education – the sort that kept the country at the top of international literacy tables, unlike Scotland’s dismal SNP track record – has always rightly seen the raising of education standards globally as a priority for developed countries.

He has travelled widely, making sure to understand the failings of education policy, and here sets out a detailed and persuasive case for grasping the opportunity of technology as a “game changer”, allowing countries without educational infrastructure to leapfrog up the performance ladder. 

Gordon expresses frustration with traditional teaching methods – “The way we teach and are taught ….. has also changed too little. We still cling to the idea of the teacher as the sage”. The reader can’t resist the unkind thought that Brown of the Remove probably thought of his dingy teachers as inferior beings. 

The need for continuing education in a rapidly changing labour market is explored, and he plugs the International Finance Facility for Education initiative he has helped launch.

Chapter 6 addresses “Meeting the sustainable development goals”. This is a more lucid passage, focusing on refugees, and making the point that the old solutions which relied on refugees going home after domestic crises abated is long gone. They are not on a boondoggle to a more prosperous life. Ninety per cent of refugees flee to poor countries. 

The point is made that the sticking plaster solution of tented village, food handed out by blue helmeted helpers and then cameras moving on when interest drifts, is not enough. 

Solutions? Enhance the role of the relatively successful World Bank, establish a UN perpetual Bond to fund long term aid and hark back to a Marshall Plan suitable for undeveloped economies. In 1945 Germany was rebuilding infrastructure. Today we are often creating it from scratch – a very different challenge. 

I found this the most compelling “Way” in the book and picked up an interesting factoid – that a money transfer system, M-Pesa, effectively cash on a mobile phone, developed for third world economies is now the largest cash transactional system on the planet. True!

The section on eliminating tax havens has been upstaged by the recent G7 accord and the chapter on eliminating nuclear weapons, while a useful history of post WWII negotiations, points to no solution other than of the “must do better” kind. We must build “a security structure”. The passage on escalating nuclear risks, with countries lining up to join the club is a cautionary tale.

Shaping Our Future is a treatise on the ebb and flow of the American/Chinese relationship and reinforces the point that as China rises America and its allies have to reshape policy to meet emerging challenges. Gordon’s pay-off conclusion – “The West must reflect” – is not particularly helpful for the recently elected President Biden. 

There follows a bee in the bonnet bolt-on chapter about the distinction between nationalism and patriotism, nationalism being the refuge of populists – i.e. people increasingly looking likely to win elections across Europe. Er… isn’t winning elections what democracy is all about Gordon? That was certainly the message being pounded home in the Union Beer Bar in 1972.

The final chapter on The Power of Hope should be skipped. It descends to generalities, including “build upon what’s best in people” and “big lies need to be exposed” – completely forgetting that one man’s big lie is another’s unassailable truth. This is end filler.

Gordon Brown’s book is well worth reading despite its capacity to drive many readers to grind their teeth. The comprehensive and well-researched notes run to 46 pages. The index runs to 14. Gordon is nothing if not thorough. Leaving wonky big brother solutions aside, this is an excellent work of reference to keep handy on anyone’s desk.