{"id":439758,"date":"2026-02-22T14:50:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T14:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/439758\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T14:50:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T14:50:19","slug":"what-drives-gordon-brown-new-statesman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/439758\/","title":{"rendered":"What drives Gordon Brown? – New Statesman"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n Gordon Brown at his home in Fife, Scotland, before entering government. Photo by Colin McPherson\/Corbis via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Gordon Brown wasn\u2019t the only figure who demanded the police investigate the former prince Andrew<\/a>, but he was certainly one of the most determined and high-profile. The former prime minister submitted to British police forces<\/a> two memorandums showing in \u201cgraphic detail\u201d how the former Duke of York\u2019s paedophile associate Jeffrey Epstein used Stansted Airport in Essex to \u201cfly in girls from Latvia, Lithuania and Russia\u201d.<\/p>\n

What drives a 75-year-old who last held public office in 2010 to keep fighting the good fight? He does so at zero financial gain, and indeed arguably at a personal price, while his contemporaries chase rather more lucrative engagements. The contrast couldn\u2019t be greater with multimillionaire Tony Blair, whose eponymous institute is largely funded by the US tech bro Larry Ellison, and who gurned at the launch of ringmaster Donald Trump\u2019s Board of Peace circus. Or with Peter Mandelson, Brown\u2019s de facto deputy for two of his three years as PM, who has also faced the wrath of Brown after the Epstein files suggested he sent the financier official government economic information.<\/p>\n

The answer, according to Stewart Wood, a former adviser to Brown and now Lord Wood of Anfield, is that this Scottish son of the manse is a conviction politician, driven since childhood to champion the underdog. \u201cI think what motivates Brown is a belief that politics is fundamentally about serving those who are poor, without privilege or without a voice,\u201d Wood says. \u201cIt is an instinct he inherited from his Church of Scotland father, though unlike his dad it took him into a political rather than religious calling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown, Wood says, is \u201charder working than anyone else in politics, blessed with incomparable stamina, prepared to be ruthless when necessary\u201d. He also has an \u201cinsatiable appetite for ideas and new thinking\u201d; he is confident in his beliefs, but willing to be challenged on them. Ultimately, he is \u201cimpatient for change\u201d.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Subscribe to the New Statesman today for only \u00a31 a week.<\/p>\n

The Multibank, a charity Brown started in Kirkcaldy that operates six hubs across the country and works with more than 100 businesses, distributes more than 14 million essential items to around two million families. Here, Brown is doing the heavy lifting, attempting to create that change, instead of staying aloof.<\/p>\n

Brown is also a United Nations special envoy for global education and a World Health Organisation ambassador for global health financing, as well as leader of progressive causes in Britain. He was instrumental in persuading Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves to remove the cruel two-child benefit cap, lifting half a million children out of poverty. He lobbied hard privately and prodded publicly for it<\/a>, and also itemised how taxes on huge gambling profits could be utilised to give children a better start in life.<\/p>\n

A Labour left-winger politically closer to Jeremy Corbyn than to Brown, but who worked with both, observed an often-overlooked difference between the two. Corbyn, they recounted, would sympathise and comfort people he encountered with problems. Brown, said the figure, would sympathise, comfort, then immediately declare he had or would find a plan to improve their life.<\/p>\n

Shortly before the Covid pandemic, volunteers in Fife told me how Brown, on entering a house in which two children were sleeping on the floor, went home to dismantle his own sons\u2019 bunk beds to give to them. Brown, on discovering I\u2019d learned what he did, looked embarrassed and mumbled it was nothing.<\/p>\n

To Charlie Whelan, Brown\u2019s spin doctor when Labour was in opposition and at the start of his chancellorship, told me the bed donation was \u201cpure Gordon\u201d. It was also a demonstration of his continuing dynamism in the area where his mother and father once effectively played the roles of community social workers.<\/p>\n

Brown\u2019s drive, says Whelan, originates from \u201chis upbringing, his father and family and desire to do the right thing\u201d. \u201cNever, never, ever has money been a goal. It just doesn\u2019t enter his head. Anybody who went to his house in the old days saw it was falling to bits\u2026 Sarah [Brown\u2019s wife] made it better, but any extra money he did get would pay for another researcher or someone who could fight a cause and expose the Tories.<\/p>\n

\u201cGordon\u2019s unique among the political class. I have never met anybody like him.\u201d Others go into politics, says Whelan, for \u201centirely different reasons\u201d \u2013 reasons that have fuelled the distrust in the system only exacerbated by the links between British politics and institutions with Epstein. Brown has added this to his list of campaigns, \u201cand [he] will never give up until he wins\u201d.<\/p>\n

Brown is an antidote to cynics who shout that all politicians are the same. They aren\u2019t. But he does shame the entitled from Westminster or Windsor Castle.<\/p>\n

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