In comments released ahead of the Brown report, Starmer made no mention of the House of Lords, instead concentrating on how Labour would bring about “real economic empowerment for our devolved government, the mayors, and local authorities”. This,” they lament, “is what happens when the Fed conditions the system to expect either abundant liquidity or bailouts. Most people would rightly regard as morally abhorrent the proposition that a child born into the poorest 20% of a population should face a risk of mortality twice as high as a child born into the richest 20%. 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 ruefully remarks: “It is often those with the best-laid plans who are most at the mercy of events.

Where Brown differs from a regular Davos bore is that he clearly holds deep-seated moral views regarding the responsibilities of wealthy countries to less wealthy ones, combined with a sense that true justice (a word that recurs throughout the book) is never adequately achieved, but needs constantly pushing for. In this event, filmed live at the 2021 Edinburgh International Book Festival, he discusses his latest book, Seven Ways to Change the World, in which he sets out his plan for creating a fairer and more equal society. The moral injunction is to say “we cannot just assert that global problems need global solutions but must go a step further and persuade the sceptical”. Labour has never really recovered from this moment, and British politics is now dominated by the nationalisms of England and Scotland. He is credited with preventing a second Great Depression through his leadership at the 2009 London G20 summit where he mobilised global leaders to walk the world back from the financial brink.offers a mixture of moral arguments and policy solutions that carefully avoids political controversy. He has a comprehensive view of the world that goes from a fair version of an open globalisation and drops down to what’s needed to support individuals. Instead, the two men did a deal that left Blair overly deferential to Brown and Brown overly expectant about the succession.

The belief that global problems need global solutions is scarcely radical, though the book’s historic context – a global pandemic, the threat of nationalism and protectionism, cooling Sino-American relations, the glimmer of hope offered by the Biden presidency – does make it timely.Brown outlines seven major global problems we must address: global health; climate change; nuclear proliferation; financial instability; global poverty; the barriers to education and opportunity; and global inequality. Brown has identified seven areas where greater international cooperation is required: global health, economic prosperity, climate change, education, humanitarianism, abolishing tax havens and eliminating nuclear weapons. This book implies – and its authors embody – a convergence of interest between the heads of G20 delegations and those advising top investment firms. The process was kickstarted with the publication of Crashed by Adam Tooze in 2018, a much lauded first draft of history.

In an early draft of the report leaked to the Guardian in September, Brown recommended that the House of Lords would be reformed as an assembly of regions and nations, with a remit of safeguarding the constitution and with power to refer the government to the supreme court. Brown recommends cultivating “300 emerging clusters of the new economy” and eliminating “Westminster and Whitehall bias and giving everywhere a fair share of our future prosperity”.We are going to of course abolish the House of Lords and replace it with a reformed second chamber in which there will be enhanced Scottish representation and it would have a constitutional role to protect the devolution settlement,” he said. Permacrisis recognises that a growth policy that also addresses issues like gender equity and climate change can create a sustainable economy that raises all boats. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian All 40 of Gordon Brown’s recommendations will now be subject to consultation.