Global Statesman

Revisits Gordon Brown's decade as the New Labour Chancellor and his crucial but neglected attempts to eliminate global poverty From DFID to Brown's own faith and social philosophy, Webber explores, problematises and critiques Brown's policies on overseas aid, Third-World debt and addressing HIV/AIDS. Drawing on nearly two decades' worth of primary research, including an exhaustive survey of speeches and policy statements made by Gordon Brown both before and during his time in government, David Webber provides a body of evidence currently absent from the New Labour/UK politics literature. Discover the level of influence that Brown was able to wield in international financial institutions such as the World Bank and IMF; Ed Balls' influence on Brown from the early 1990s; and the revelatory finding that Brown's famous 'surprise' decision to hand over monetary policy to the Bank of England was, in fact, made at least four years before New Labour even came to power. Key Features Uniquely focuses on how Brown sought to carve out his own personal place upon the world stage Reveals that the newly created Department for International Development (DFID) was effectively subsumed into the Treasury rather than the Foreign Office - so that Brown could control their policy design and output Shows how demands for social justice made by civil society groups were 'matched' by Brown's own faith and social philosophy, becoming co-opted and recycled into his international development policies Problematises the 'missionary zeal' of Brown; his post-colonial mindset and 'white saviour' complex, and his tendency to offer top-down universal solutions to the global South Critiques the failure of the Chancellor to take account of, let alone address, the systemic inequalities created by the neoliberal development that Brown himself sought to implement