Gordon Brown is angry. Very angry. About international development.
Speaking in New York, Mr Brown said he wanted to “press, inspire and push” people to see the virtues of education. Ensuring education for all was an issue of “security, anti-poverty and health”, he added.
“I’m angry because we made commitments that we would meet these Millennium Development Goals,” he told the BBC at a meeting to review progress towards them.
Exactly how angry is the former prime minister? His current level of crossness knows no precedent, as he noted in an op-ed in yesterday’s FT about backsliding on aid for education in the developing world.
I have taken a new role with the Global Campaign for Education because I am angrier than ever about the injustice and waste in denying education.
Uh-oh. Where could this intensely bad mood lead?
“Quite frankly, if I don’t see progress on education in the next year, it’s going to be slobbering beast-man time. And you won’t like that,” the premier told an audience in New York.
Oh, all right, I made that last one up. To be serious: (1) anyone who cares about the politics of development should be glad that Brown is back in the game already, as he’s such a heavy-hitter on the issue; (2) the Global Campaign for Education is a great cause for the former PM to promote; but (3) is it really wise for a politician with a reputation for gigantic rages to use “anger” as his trademark in post-premiership life?
By chance, the BBC has just published an account of GB’s time in Downing Street:
“Gordon would shout and be exasperated and angry about things, but it was always for the right reasons,” says his Director of Strategy, David Muir. “His boss is the British public and he’s got to be demanding of his team, and if that meant he lost his temper, sometimes he lost his temper.”
Fair enough, but it might be useful to pursue good causes out of office in a calmer fashion. An angry prime minister is one thing. An angry elder statesman is another, and potentially less influential. There is a risk of going too far down the Bob Geldof route of outraged advocacy… impassioned, yes, but so cross that the public just gets used to it. If Brown wants use occasional anger to “press and push” for action, showing some temper may be a useful tactic. But if his goal is to “inspire” as well, as he told the BBC, then he should reach for finer adjectives than “angry”.
