Brown dilemma

BY FOCUSING on some of the results of some of Gordon Brown’s actions as Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Allan (Letters, 5 September) misses the subtle depth of Joyce McMillan’s answer “Why political leaders need our help” (Perspective, 2 September) to an unstated rhetorical question.

He chronicles a list of failures as somehow undermining her analysis and strongly disagrees with both her and Dr Mary Brown’s views that we should look at the values of both the politician and the social context in which they operate when judging them. While I do not disagree with David Allan’s views, I strongly disagree with his analysis.

Joyce McMillan was commenting on “the inherent contradictions” of Brown’s project in which he attempted to “triangulate” between “the socially disruptive and divisive forces of the economic system he embraced, and the socially cohesive values he called his own”. In doing this, she is perhaps partly explaining why the economic and political failures listed by David Allan occurred.

Dr Mary Brown also wished to focus on Gordon Brown’s socially cohesive values, which she states are “untainted by personal greed”, and asks us to direct our attention “not on individuals in politics, but the system that creates them”.

In asking us to do this Dr Brown (Mary, not Gordon) seems to miss a point about the human condition: there is an essential tension between a system that creates an individual and the individuals who create a system. The relationship between them is not only a symbiotic one but a paradoxical one. Gordon Brown’s failure, if indeed it was one, was not just a failure to recognise the internal contradictions of his grand project, it was a failure to compromise his socially cohesive values and to let himself be diverted by the socially divisive values inherent in the personal greed seen in many other politicians, such as those who rush to publish their memoirs.

Dr Francis Roberts

Greenbank Avenue

Edinburgh