YouSaid · the spoken record

Gordon Brown

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67
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2022-01-27
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2022-01-27
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  1. “And this is the challenge for every party in politics because the changing environment always requires you to rethink your policies. You've got to reappraise them every generation. But unless they reflected our values, we couldn't persuade people to stay with Labour. So we had this huge.”

    2022-01-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 475 — Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “So I came in in 1983 and Labour had a new leader, Neil Kinnock, which I helped elect him. Tony Blair and I were both, we actually shared an office for many years. And we realized that if the Labour Party didn't change, if it didn't modernize, then the Labour Party was never going to be able to survive. So we made it our business. I came from this very industrial seat in Scotland, so I was very aware that while people were loyal to labour, they were not happy with labour. And of course, in England, which was, of course, more traditionally conservative than Labour, people had walked away in droves. So we had to rebuild and realize that unless we could have policies that reflected our values,”

    2022-01-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 475 — Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Well, this was the Nadia because I'd stood in 1979 in Edinburgh where I'd been a student and I didn't win and Labour did badly. And I stood in my home area in 1983 and won, and Labour did even worse. People said of that campaign, it started badly and it fell away because people talked about our manifesto being the longest suicide note in history. What had actually happened was that our policies had become different and did not reflect anymore our values. So we had all these policies about nationalization of this, about getting rid of our defense forces and everything else. And it no longer reflected the reason that people were labor were, if you like, on the left and politics in the first place. They didn't prove to be the best way of advancing social justice or liberty or freedom. Or even full employment. So we had to rethink completely.”

    2022-01-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 475 — Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “The British Prime Minister, well, I don't know by the time people see this broadcast whether you'll still be Prime Minister. I mean, we're going through prime ministers at a very fast rate. I mean, we've had David Cameron in 2016 Theresa May to 2019. Now Boris Johnson is hanging on at 2022. So there's a bit of a turnover here. And I mean, I think he comes on the gambling side, taking chances.”

    2022-01-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 475 — Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I mean, in Britain, they talk about this distinction between politicians who are bishops and politicians who are bookies, which is gamblers. And I suppose there is some truth in that. You've got a message you want to get across or you're actually just playing a game. And I think the most successful politicians who you worked with Barack Obama is one of them have got a message. They've got something they want to do and they've got something they want to get completed.”

    2022-01-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 475 — Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “The point is, you solve people in a far worse position, and so you wanted to do something about it. And I think that's the influence that public service can make a difference, that politics is not a game, it's about changing things, there's no point in going into politics if it's all that you want is to be famous. The only reason, and I still hold to that, is to see if you can make a difference. And politics is about hope. It's about giving people hope that things can actually change. And if you can show, it's more than optimism, which is things might change. I mean, hope means that you've got, and Barack Obama, of course, use the term audacity of hope. Hope means that you've got a determination that things will change. And I think that's what the best of politics is about.”

    2022-01-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 475 — Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Well, I think, as I said, once I was, you know, when you're recovering from an operation like the retinal detachment, you're lying blinded, in some cases for three weeks, and you can't see anything. And you have to think about the world. And I think that's the point at which I realized I wanted to be a university teacher and I did do a lot of teaching and I still do some and I really enjoy doing lectures and tutoring. But I felt that the problems that I saw around us, we could do something about it. And I was particularly influenced by what I'd seen growing up. We used to go and visit. My father and I used to visit families because there was a lot of flooding happened in the town we grew up because it was by the sea and you saw the condition of the housing and we were never very wealthy ourselves.”

    2022-01-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 475 — Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “You know, one's something that you really love like sport, you've got to be a spectator and not a participant. Once that goes, you really are thinking about what are you doing as a teenager? What are you doing in your early 20s? So I didn't think it made me realize that I had to do something different. And so I got more involved, obviously, in politics. I got more involved with the Labour Party in particular. And I've been very lucky because this retinol operation that I had has helped for 50 years. So I've been very fortunate indeed. And I talked to this surgeon who's no longer young every few months and he checks me out and everything else. And it's remarkable, but he was trained in Chicago. So you guys should be very pleased.”

    2022-01-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 475 — Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I thank Chicago because the surgeon who saved my eyesight, I walked into a hospital thinking I was about to go blind because what had happened my first eye and I'd gone blind was happening in my second eye and I was only 1920 and I believe that there was no way to save it because they had failed three times with one eye and then a young guy who had been trained in Chicago had come back to Edinburgh he was of Indian background a great magnificent medical doctor and I was probably his first operation and the surgeon handed it to him and he used all the new techniques that had been developed in Chicago and my eyesight was saved and it was just remarkable because I really did feel I was a About to lose all my sight”

    2022-01-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 475 — Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Almost as dangerous as American football, you know, but without the head shields, there's no protection if you're playing rugby.”

    2022-01-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 475 — Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I wouldn't recommend it for everybody. I was very young when I went to university. I mean, I'd done all the exams at 15 and I got there at 16. I actually ended up in hospital the first week I was at university, so I missed actually the first, much of the first and second years because I'd got an injury playing. I lost the sight of my eye and I had to be in hospital for months as a result of that. So I did get to university at 16. I probably started studying at 18”

    2022-01-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 475 — Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Yeah, and when I finally persuaded, Larry Summers was the Treasury Secretary at the time. When we finally persuaded him, which, and that was the key person at that time to persuade, it was a great success. And I think we brought off as a world about 200 billion of debt of some of the poorest countries in Africa and Asia. And that made it possible for them to spend. And I think we've got evidence of that, to spend on health and education where they were spending on debt interest payments. The lessons I learned young were applied. And you know, when you say to people debt relief, a banker will tell you, you know, moral has a moral hazard. And we started off with 80% of debt relief, then 90%, then 95%. And suddenly it was 100% debt relief. And people say, you can't do that. That's just against the way the financial system works. But we brought up about 200 billion of debt.”

    2022-01-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 475 — Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Harold Wilson, who was the prime minister, got an interview with him. I did the mirror, I did the sports commentary. But it was really interesting because you were raising money for a charity and finding out about what was happening in the rest of the world. And I think a lot of young people growing up at that time became more aware as Britain, you know, Britain's empire was collapsing. We were leaving Africa, but there was huge problems of poverty and hunger, partly because of civil wars, but also because of just the sheer poverty of the places. So I became very aware that there was an international context, the poverty we were seeing.”

    2022-01-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 475 — Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “It was called Freedom from Hunger. It was a campaign being run by Oxfam to try to elect people to the malnutrition that was taking place in Africa. So we raised money. My brother was actually more innovative than me. He got an interview with John Glenn, your famous astronaut.”

    2022-01-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 475 — Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Lost and the conservatives or someone was dear lord of Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways. And of course, the nationalists or some third-party one, it was God works in mysterious ways is wondrous to perform. So it wasn't blatant religious propaganda coming from my father. He was always very conscious that in his congregation there were people of so many different views. And I grew up aware that you had to respect all views in politics, although I felt the poverty that I saw around me because this was a time of huge change. The mining industry was falling textile. I remember one company just a few yards from where we lived had a factory and 500 people were made redundant in one week and that really had an influence me. I thought you've got to be able to do something about this. My school friends were leaving to go to other parts of the country and there was an emigration happening because of unemployment and I felt we needed to do something.”

    2022-01-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 475 — Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Clearly, religion, Christianity, growing up as the son of a minister with two brothers in this town was bound to have an influence on you. And you're talking about the 1950s and the 1960s, when just like America, Scotland was probably the most religious country after America in the whole world where everybody or large numbers of people went to church. So it can not have an influence on you. And my father wasn't party political in the sense that he would try to influence his congregation with his views, but I always knew that he was a believer in social justice. There was a friend of mine actually that every time that the Labour Party, you know, the equivalent of your Democrats at one, he would call the hymn on the Sunday. Now thank we all are God.”

    2022-01-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 475 — Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “such an important figure in economics and next door is Dumfurman which is the home of Andrew Carnegie and of course he remains well known for his philanthropic activities around the world so yeah I was brought up in this. What is actually an industrial town, mining, coal mining and textiles on the periphery, if you like, of the conurbation of Edinburgh? And what I saw growing up, I'm afraid, was a lot of poverty, a lot of unemployment, and that's what really influenced me.”

    2022-01-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 475 — Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source