Gordon brown

Every now and again, Gordon Brown makes a decent point – as he does today, pointing out that 80 per cent of the jabs have gone to the 20 richest countries. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organisation chief, warned in January that ‘even as vaccines bring hope to some, they become another brick in the wall of inequality between the world’s haves and have-nots.’ MPs rebel over cutting aid. But send vaccines to overseas pensioners, when they could be heading for the arms of British schoolchildren? Here, they fall silent. Ethically, it’s a far harder question. When Covid vaccines were still a hypothetical, the moral dilemma was clear. Once a

Lots of self-promotion. An avalanche of leaks. Fiddly tax changes that always somehow turn out to be an increase, plenty of creative double counting, and heavy spending on marginal seats, all wrapped up in a package designed to effortlessly transport its author into Number 10. Remind you of anyone? It is of course Gordon Brown, and one of his interminable Budget speeches, in his pomp. But it is also a pretty good description of Rishi Sunak.  The Tory Chancellor is quickly turning into the political equivalent of one of those bands hamming up Abba covers on a Saturday night: a Gordon Brown tribute act. The trouble is that the country could

Back in 2006, when he was close to executing his masterplan to chase Tony Blair out of Downing Street, Gordon Brown sought to address something that worried many voters: his Scottishness. ‘My wife is from Middle England, so I can relate to it,’ he pronounced, as if Middle England were a town somewhere off the M40. In fact, though Sarah Brown was born in Buckinghamshire, she spent most of her early childhood in Tanzania and her family moved to North London when she was seven. By mistaking a term denoting the provincial English psyche for a geographical area, Brown merely demonstrated that he was indeed all at sea. He has

Gordon Brown has broken his silence again. The former prime minister told the Edinburgh International Book Festival that the Scottish Parliament had ‘failed to deliver a fairer and more prosperous Scotland’ and had instead become a ‘battering ram for constitutional warfare’. What’s that, Lassie? Timmy’s trapped down the well? And creating a Scottish parliament to run almost all of Scotland’s affairs separately from the rest of the UK helped rather than hurt the campaign for independence? Jeepers. The battering ram that Brown laments exists only because the party and government in which he played a somewhat senior role insisted on fashioning it. At the time of the Scottish devolution referendum

One of the truisms that has emerged from this election is that maybe Gordon Brown was right to veer away from calling an early election after all. Pursuing a snap election turned out to be a grave error for Theresa May, and so perhaps the Labour Prime Minister was wiser than everyone gave him credit for at the time. But while this may seem obviously true, what has actually happened is that May has confirmed her similarity to Brown. The latest YouGov polling on May’s personal ratings reminds us that both reaped a severe punishment for going anywhere near an early poll, regardless of whether they followed through and held

At the outset of this general election campaign one thing seemed clear: Labour would get everything they deserved but, alas, the Tories would not. That is, Jeremy Corbyn would lead Labour to a thoroughly-merited disaster and Theresa May would gain an ill-deserved, but whopping, victory. Well that was then and this is now as it looks, at least for the moment, as though this scenario could be reversed. The Tories, enduring a stinker of a campaign, may be punished just as thoroughly as they deserve to be but, if that is the judgement of the British people, it also requires voters to treat Labour with a gentle indulgence the party

Downing Street has rejected William Hague’s call for a snap general election. The former Conservative leader argues in his Telegraph column today that this would ‘strengthen the government’s hand at home and abroad’, but Number 10 says this isn’t something Theresa May ‘plans to do or wishes to do’.  Theresa May is often compared to Gordon Brown, but one thing she will have learned from that previous Prime Minister was that to talk about an early election is a very bad idea, especially if it then turns out that it isn’t something that you wish to do either. But is she secretly keen on an early election? Those who are

Standing outside No. 10, our newly chosen — though not elected — Prime Minister decided to address the country directly. It was finally time, we learned, for a government dedicated to those who had been left out. ‘To those who feel the political system doesn’t listen and doesn’t care; to those who feel powerless and have lost faith; to those who feel Westminster is a distant place and politics simply a spectator sport: I will strive to earn your trust.’ These words — and other lines about parents juggling work and childcare — were perfect for Theresa May’s pitch of one nation Toryism. But they had been uttered before: by

Westminster prefers to concentrate on one drama at a time. That is why the old rule of thumb was that only one party leader could be under pressure at any given moment. Recent events have upended that convention. The Brexit vote precipitated leadership crises for more than one party. But the spectacle of the Tory leadership election has rather overshadowed the fact that Labour is having its own leadership contest. The contest between Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith, the party’s former work and pensions spokesman, will run all summer. In Labour circles, Corbyn is regarded as the clear favourite. Once again, the hard left appears to have succeeded in getting