Gordon Brown's New Book Links Civic Collapse to Populism — SkimNews
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- Gordon Brown publishes "The Future Starts With Us," arguing that collapsing civic ties — falling membership in clubs, unions and churches — feed both populist politics at home and retreat from multilateralism abroad.
- The book draws on polling of 32,000 people across 20 developed countries, from Argentina to the UK to South Korea, distinguishing "zero sum" thinkers from a more generous "civic core" that progressive governments can mobilise.
- Brown frames domestic "breakdown" and international "breakup" as threads of the same unravelling, proposing a virtuous circle in which stronger local bonds enable more generous international cooperation on climate, poverty and great-power competition.
- Brown acknowledges the civic togetherness he celebrates was partly built on the unpaid labour of women stuck at home, tempering what could otherwise read as nostalgia for a bygone era.
- The reviewer judges Brown's neighbourhood-level prescriptions more convincing than his proposal for a new universal charter, noting that bodies like the ICC and the Paris accords already lack enforcement rather than lacking declarations.
- Brown's previous collaboration was "Permacrisis" (2023) with economists Mohammed El-Erian and Michael Spence; the reviewer notes striking thematic overlap with Andy Burnham's early agenda and Ed Miliband's approach.
Why it matters: Brown's thesis offers Labour a single narrative hook linking red-wall economic grievance to foreign policy — appealing to both post-industrial towns and big-city liberals — but the reviewer's central critique is that enforcement, not aspiration, is what existing international bodies already lack, leaving his grand-charter proposal weaker than his call to start small in places like Kirkcaldy.
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