How Gordon sees the world

23 August 2006

Mark Leonard, an authority on Labour foreign policy with strong connections to the government, has spoken to those close to the Chancellor in search of Brown’s notoriously opaque views on international affairs. This is what he discovered

As Brown first showed in his 1999 ‘economics of hope’ speech to the Church of Scotland, his economic and moral agendas are intertwined. One of his friends says, ‘Gordon, more than anyone else, recognises the extraordinary impact that trade can have in places like Africa. That comes both from his experience as a finance minister but also from the impact of trade on the poor in Kirkcaldy.’ Over the years Brown has applied his formidable political skills and obsession with policy detail to changing the nature of the debate on international development: spearheading the campaign to drop debt, inventing the ‘International Financing Facility’ to boost development aid with money from bond markets, and playing a lead role in the 2005 campaign to ‘Make Poverty History’. As one Brownite puts it, ‘You always know where Gordon’s priorities are by looking at how much money he gives to different departments. When he came to power the Department for International Development was a small backwater in the FCO — now it has a budget three times the size.’

But just as important has been Brown’s alliance with charities and churches to turn public opinion around on development (a former adviser to the Catholic Church talks about cardinals in the Vatican ‘eating out of his hand’). The success of the coalition to ‘Make Poverty History’ points to a different way of doing politics and foreign policy, which Ed Balls believes could be replicated with broad-based campaigns on climate change and globalisation. Brown will argue that development spending is a policy for countering terrorism as well as a moral imperative. His friends explain that he compares the scale of today’s terrorist challenge with the Cold War — where military strategies went hand in hand with appeals to hearts and minds.