It has been reported that Gordon Brown has decided his time is up as the MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. As I write this it still hasn’t been officially confirmed, so it could be an elaborate hoax. However, even the BBC reported it so it must be true. The 63-year-old son of the manse has served nearly 32 years as a Labour MP. And, let’s not forget, he was Prime Minister from 2007 to 2010, when Labour was defeated, recording its worst general election result since 1983.
Since then, he has kept a pretty low profile apart from the infamous intervention in the referendum campaign. Delivering the “vow” he is thought to have saved the No campaign from the brink of defeat. So on that note, he must be going out on a high? Maybe not. For all his talents, timing has never been his strong point.
The latest Survation poll suggests the SNP will take 52 of Scotland’s 59 seats. While I think that to be a bit optimistic and Gordon’s 23,000 majority makes his seat safe, we do know for sure Labour in Scotland have a real battle on their hands.
After hearing Gordon Brown’s news that he won’t stand, Fraser Nelson wrote in the Spectator that “it’s not the prospect of defeat that’s the issue here it’s the prospect of a real fight”.
Has Gordon bottled it? Does an international role beckon? Does the prospect of Scottish Labour under a branch office system administered by Jim Murphy make him want to leave? Or has he just had enough? I will let you answer that.
To many people, his generation of traditional Labour politician is now lost. For me, it was what he represented rather than the reality that will be missed. He hasn’t stood by those values in years.
I actually had good intentions when writing this column to try to be as positive as possible in a constructive critique of his career. But like Gordon I have ended up in a very different place to where I started out. The facts just got the better of me. I’ve always wanted to like him, but like many Scottish voters, I suspect, I feel he has repeatedly let me down. His radical origins editing The Red Paper in Scotland evaporated in the New Labour smoke machine which was hell-bent on surrendering its principles for international prestige and that “special relationship” which dragged us into illegal wars. Brown helped carry Tony Blair on that journey.
He would have achieved more for social justice for his constituents as First Minister of an independent Scotland than Prime Minister of the UK, because he was forced to tack to the right and perhaps move away from things he truly believed in, in order to win for Labour in the south of England.
Here was a Labour politician who began politics with strong socially just foundations and a vision for social change. While he made achievements in this area such as enforcing a national minimum wage he ended up destroying the value of ordinary people’s pensions and savings, bankrolled an illegal war and presided over a boom which led to a bust. And let’s not forget he claimed to have saved the world, or the banks, one or the other anyway . . . Then, to top it all off, he sold Scotland down the swanee, making promises he couldn’t keep after a few phone calls from the Tories in Downing Street. For that, I suspect the people of Scotland will neither forgive nor forget.
In saying that, he has, I think, one thing in common with Alex Salmond. I don’t think we will expect to see him queuing up for a seat in the House of Lords. Even he would find that hard to swallow.
So how are we to remember him? It’s a legacy at odds with his ability and that is a great shame. But as we all know, he has been his own worst enemy. He was a politician who became Prime Minister 10 years too late, and who became obsessed with power instead of the power to change.
There are, of course qualities to be admired in “unflash Gordon” and I hope in his next adventures we see a return to his roots which bring out the best in him. He just needs to remember them.
After 32 years as a politician he has other interests to pursue in his role as UN Special Envoy for Global Education, an area in which he has deeply held convictions and has held them throughout his career, to his credit.
He is leaving local politics to pursue international development. Maybe it is for the best. Of the 10 worst areas for unemployment in Fife, seven are in Gordon Brown’s constituency and it has been that way for decades.
When I told my Twitter followers I was writing this piece, Irvine Welsh replied with: “Three big, crucial moments in his career and he was hopelessly done over each time. To all our detriments. 1. Blair over Lab leadership 2. Bankers over economy 3. Cameron over devo max.”
A neat summary indeed.