Day 7 - Gordon and the Beanstalk

For many ex-prime ministers, post-resignation memoirs are a first big excursion into print, and an unavoidably self-absorbed one. Now that parties lack the patience for a Harold Wilson-style comeback, the quickly penned autobiography is often a last chance to weave a favoured narrative round fast-receding events - and pass judgement on cabinet-table colleagues now repackaging their own history. To Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, both ditched by supporters before the voters could give a final verdict, memoirs became an especially prized weapon of wounded self-justification.

Gordon Brown, in contrast, was a widely published author before arriving at Number 10, and his first venture into print since leaving it will not be the full autobiographical work. Instead, Brown’s new book is focused on the 2008 financial crisis, and the complex events leading up to it, which coincided with his move from Chancellor to Premier. Political reviews will inevitably lead on what’s said of those still in the Westminster fray. How did Brown’s top economic adviser Ed Balls, and new shadow chancellor Alan Johnson, shape up in the perilous hours when Lehman Brothers crashed and the world’s financial system neared the brink of collapse? What role, if any, did David Cameron and George Osborne play in the proceedings? Was Gordon’s the only survival strategy not ghostwritten by Goldman Sachs?

Economists, still assessing what caused this near-repeat of the Wall Street Crash and Great Depression, will be more interested in Brown’s account of how his rescue plans prevailed over those proposed by his American and other European counterparts. Although his ten years running the Treasury invite accusations that he sowed the seeds of disaster, Brown has an unusually strong claim to – almost single-handedly - slaying the subsequent beanstalk, through a combination of brave words to camera and rapid behind-the-scenes footwork. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, who assails most politicians with the sharpshooting glee of a central bank hitting its inflation target, made Brown an honourable exception – at one stage virtually ascribing him the world-saving role whose self-declaration was mocked on home soil.   

Brown’s pre-resignation works ranged from Fabian Society pamphlets to essays on war heroes, and he is probably the only serving prime minister to publish an article in the Economic Journal – not inappropriate for a former OU Staff Tutor. His histories lack the scale and stature of Winston Churchill’s, and he has yet to match Disraeli in the novel-writing stakes. But financial-sector truth was considerably stranger than fiction in the short, fraught interval between the September 2007 run on Northern Rock and the remarkable economic rebound in the first half of 2010. The message Brown publishes today will be that his misfortune in taking office at such a moment was the rest of the nation’s good fortune. Though predictable, this may just be right.

You and your money

Follow the stories of our budget-conscious trio as they explore different ways to make ends meet. Can you help them juggle their money to get the lives they want?