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Issue 136, July 2007
An intellectual in power
by John Lloyd
 Intensive study has made Gordon Brown into one of the best-read politicians of recent times. But what is hisintellectual formation and style? And how will they inform his premiership? John Lloyd is a writer for the FT and the author of What the Media are Doing to our Politics (Constable & Robinson)
This is the first article in a six-piece symposium on Gordon Brown as intellectual. Other articles include:Iain McLean on other intellectual prime ministers throughout historyDaniel Johnson on Brown the unsophisticated bookwormGeoff Mulgan on the American inspiration behind Brown's thinkingRichard Cockett on the question of Brown's religious faithKamran Nazeer on Brown's book Courage Discuss this article at First Drafts, Prospect's new blogIn an essay in The Red Paper on Scotland, a 1975 collection that he edited, Gordon Brown revealed a youthfuladmiration for Antonio Gramsci, the Italian communist leader of the 1920s. Such an admiration was common among leftistintellectuals at the time, including those who, like Brown, always stayed on the democratic side of socialism. Gramsci wasseen as a forerunner of the acceptable, even pluralist, face of communism then being promoted by the Italian and Spanishcommunist parties, which offered a bridge between the so-called revolutionary and the revisionist socialists--the former stillstrong in the Scots labour movement of the 1960s and 1970s.Much of Brown's admiration for Gramsci has passed away--as has that for James Maxton, who inspired Brown's onlyproper book (based on his PhD) and whose career in "Red Clydeside" agitation in the early 20th century was also suspendedbetween the revolutionary and democratic strains of socialism. But in one respect, Gramsci still provides a kind of motto forBrown's thought and practice. In The Modern Prince, he wrote that, "man can affect his own development and that of his
 
surroundings only so far as he has a clear view of what the possibilities of action open to him are. To do this he has tounderstand the historical situation in which he finds himself: and once he does this, then he can play an active part inmodifying that situation. The man of action is the true philosopher: and the philosopher must of necessity be a man of action." It is in the Gramscian sense that Brown is an intellectual. It is important to distinguish this type from the three mostcommon contemporary definitions. The first is the professional intellectual: an academic whose work is likely to be highlyspecialised and based around teaching and peer-reviewed research. The second is the French model of thepolitico-philosophico-sociologico-polymath--men like Foucault or Derrida who, as Mark Lilla put it, "enter into public life notas rulers but as teachers, orators, poets" (this group are sometimes known as "public intellectuals"). The third is the caricatureof the cultured and bookish politician who should, perhaps, have stayed with his books: the late Keith Joseph, MargaretThatcher's mentor, is one modern example.Brown is in the fourth category, sketched by Gramsci: a reading/thinking man of political action. He wasfast-tracked from his Kirkcaldy grammar school to Edinburgh University at 16 because of his intellect--yet, man of action thathe was, a rugby accident almost blinded him, depriving him of the sight of one eye. He took a first in history and adoctorate--while being elected as the first student rector (an honorary title) of his university. After a brief spell as anacademic, and a briefer spell as a television journalist, he was elected as an MP. The seriousness and drive he displayed weretypical marks of sons or daughters of the manse. I grew up with several such types, some 15 miles north of Brown, in EastFife: they were usually at or near the top of the class, and rarely in trouble. In this sense, Brown was typical. But in everyother way he was extraordinary--not just in his precocious university career (though Scots students then went to university atleast a year earlier than their English counterparts), but even more in his subsequent autodidactic lifestyle. Soon after he became general secretary of the Fabian Society, Sunder Katwala went to see John Reid, the homesecretary. The talk turned to Anthony Crosland's The Future of Socialism--still, more than any other work, seen as theintellectual underpinning of British social democracy. Katwala said that Crosland could write the book because he was anintellectual, and had the time, having temporarily lost a parliamentary seat. No, said Reid, he could write it because he was apolitician. Though Reid and Brown are said to dislike each other, the latter would agree with the former's evaluation. "Brownhas a kind of contempt for pure intellectuals," says an aide--speaking, like most others interviewed for this article, on thecondition that his name would not be revealed. "He has little use for those for whom ideas are everything. He reads and talksand thinks with practice in mind." (It should be said that, perhaps for these reasons, at least some intellectuals are ratherdismissive of Brown, pointing to his dull speeches and "mere" bookishness. "I doubt if he is what intellectuals think of as anintellectual," one leading social scientist told me.)On economics, Brown is mainly self-taught but can still follow even some of the most technical debates. One of hiseconomic advisers is keen, however, to dispel the idea that his nose is always in an economic journal: "His reading isinformed by history more than theory. His intellectualism is instrumental and deliberative--aimed at solving particularproblems. He keeps up with economic debates through policy--for example the debates on whether inequality is more drivenby technology or trade." In this area as elsewhere, his intellectual appetites are more catholic than his "tribal" political imageimplies. "He has really moved away from a social democratic position on the economy. He is pretty much a market liberal,"
 
says another adviser. Brown has long been concerned to understand the process loosely described as globalisation, and in the past fewmonths has been engaged in trying to chart the main movements of the world economy and society over the next decade--thetime within which he might hope to continue to be able to make some difference. His favourite book on globalisation is the2004 Why Globalization Works by the FT's Martin Wolf. Wolf's book is an exacting statement of the case for globalisationand an endorsement of its benign effects on the poor. That view is shared by another favourite Brown author, US-basedeconomist Jagdish Bhagwati, whose strictures against the anti-globalisation movement are even harsher than Wolf's. Brown isnot known to take much interest in those authors--for example David Held at the LSE--who have tried to work out adistinctively social democratic approach to globalisation.Brown's reading is wide as well as focused: he will always read the latest "big book"--Samuel Huntington's TheClash of Civilisations, Timothy Garton Ash's Free World, Henry Kissinger's Diplomacy--and then, say his aides, ask fellowcabinet members if they have read it (some of this must be mischievous: he will have gathered by now that few of hiscolleagues share his intellectual appetite). Indeed, almost everyone in the Westminster village of a bookish inclination has aBrown anecdote. For example, Douglas Hurd went to see him a few years ago to talk about prisons. After a few minutes, theconversation turned to Robert Peel, about whom Hurd was then writing a biography (which has just been published) and inwhom Brown revealed a strong and informed interest.How does he do it? He stays up late and gets up early to read. He gets aides to "gut" books and tell him on whichparts to focus--in some cases, even to write a synopsis. He often goes on the internet himself to explore subjects. And whereBlair tends to ask visitors, "How are you doing?", Brown has an old habit of asking people, "What are you reading?" On oneof the few occasions I have met Brown, I responded by recommending The Leopard, the great postwar Sicilian novel byGiuseppe di Lampedusa, which I was then re-reading. Brown grunted, and dropped the subject. I got the impression thatnovels were not among his priorities. (Indeed, there is little evidence of any real enthusiasm for the arts.) Brown's largest recent foray beyond his economic and social policy brief has been his speeches and articles onBritishness. Here, he has typically cast his net so wide as to catch almost all the significant contemporary commentators,thinkers and writers on the issue. As an aide says: "For his British Council lecture [in July 2004] we brought in Linda Colleyand David Cannadine, Jonathan Freedland and Roger Scruton. He read their stuff and he talked to them, and then he wrote thespeech." Colley's Britons has been a particular influence. She argues that Britain is "an invented nation," united by a broadlyProtestant culture, the "tonic" of recurrent war, especially with France, and by the prestige and employment opportunities of alarge empire. But for all that, the patriotism which Britishness roused in the British was real, deep and popular--even(important for the Glasgow-born chancellor) in Scotland. From these and many other observations, Brown has woven a"values-based" narrative of Britain. As he put it in the 2004 lecture--"out of the tidal flows of British history... certain forcesemerge again and again which make up a characteristically British set of values and qualities which, taken together, mean thatthere is indeed a strong and vibrant Britishness." In the course of that speech, he cited George Orwell, Douglas Bader,Andrew Marr, Neal Ascherson, Tom Nairn, Linda Colley, Norman Davies, Roger Scruton, Simon Heffer, Ferdinand Mount,Melanie Phillips, Montesquieu, David Goodhart, Herman Ousley, Bernard Crick, Henry Grattan, Matthew Arnold, EdmundBurke, Winston Churchill, Adam Smith, Jonathan Sacks and Benjamin Disraeli. He probably read them all. 
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