Not just another Davos bore … complex global issues, morality and vulnerability from the former prime minister
The question of how British prime ministers should and shouldn’t behave after leaving office has recently become a hot one. Property magnate and policy guru Tony Blair has refused to step out of the limelight, though at least shows enough self-knowledge as to understand that he will never be thanked for it. Theresa May has disappeared and cashed in, reportedly charging more than £100,000 for a speech: not bad for a woman who was said to read from a script during private one-to-one meetings. And now, of course, there is David Cameron, harassing civil servants during the darkest days of April 2020, begging them to throw his failing venture a bone, with reports that he personally stood to make £200m had Greensill Capital made it to flotation.
By contrast, Gordon Brown’s post-Westminster career has been a moral exemplar. He has surfaced to take a position in referendums – on Scottish independence and Brexit – but otherwise been largely invisible, focusing on charitable work, particularly on the expansion of education in the global south. While it addresses political questions of the greatest contemporary urgency, such as the management of the pandemic and the response to nationalism, Seven Ways to Change the World continues in the same spirit, offering a mixture of moral arguments and policy solutions that carefully avoids political controversy. He is silent on the questions of Scottish independence or Brexit, and the current prime minister (whose post-Westminster career hardly bears thinking about) earns not a single mention. Only Donald Trump, among recent political figures, is explicitly ostracised.
