Gordon Brown's travels
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Gordon Brown has been accused of having limited horizons after it emerged that, although he travels on business every couple of months to North America, he has rarely visited other countries.

The Conservatives have compiled a dossier on Mr Brown’s travels since he became Chancellor to expose what they say is the gap between his repeated rhetoric on globalisation and his limited understanding of the world.

Mr Brown is due to leave tomorrow on his first trip to India, an emerging economic giant that he has never previously visited despite making various speeches on the need to rise to the challenge of the Asian economic miracle.

The visit is expected to boost economic ties between Britain and India.

His allies also hope that it will burnish his image as an international statesman before his expected attempt to become prime minister.

Although the extraordinary growth of China is changing the shape of the world economy, Mr Brown visited it for the first time only in 2005, according to the Conservative study. He has not visited the world’s second largest economy, Japan, since he attended a G7 finance ministers meeting there in 2000.

The Chancellor has regularly championed the dynamic Eastern European economies that joined the EU in 2004, but has visited them only once, when he went to a summit in Prague, the Czech Republic capital. He has not visited Turkey, whose membership to the EU Britain has energetically championed.

He has campaigned publicly to relieve poverty in Africa, but until a high-profile tour with journalists in 2005 he had never visited the continent’s mainland in an official capacity. His only other trip to Africa was to a Commonwealth finance ministers meeting on the island of Mauritius soon after he came to office in 1997.

Despite funding the invasion of Afghanistan, he has not set foot in that country, and paid his first visit to Iraq in November. He has never made an official trip to Australia or South America.

But Mr Brown does travel regularly to the United States. Since becoming Chancellor, he has visited North America 43 times — an average of five times a year — including 20 visits to Washington, 14 to New York and 5 to Canada. The figures are likely to fuel the accusation from critics that he is unduly in thrall to the US. But his aides point out that, as Britain’s finance minister, he has to attend regular meetings at the IMF and World Bank, both based in the US capital.

The dossier on Mr Brown’s world travels was compiled by researchers for George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, who has highlighted the importance of building economic ties with Asia by making his first official visit to Japan and India.

Mr Osborne said yesterday: “He’s been Chancellor for nine years and has yet to visit huge areas of the planet. Gordon Brown talks about globalisation but he hasn’t seen much of the globe.”

The Conservatives claim that Mr Brown’s dislike of travel means that he would not be able properly to represent British interests if he became prime minister.

However, Mr Brown’s aides point out that he is Chancellor and not foreign secretary, and travelling is only a limited part of his job. Even so, he has had many international engagements in countries such as South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

A Labour source said: “If George Osborne wants to be taken seriously he needs to stop behaving like a jumped up twerp in a sixth-form debating society. Being a chancellor and responding to the challenges of globalisation is about more than having lots of stamps in your passport.

“It’s about having a record of credibility and taking the right decisions, and that is what Gordon Brown has done.”

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