Gordon Brown confirmed his unexpected green credentials for the first time
yesterday as he outlined his fight-back strategy for the new year after all
his Government’s troubles this autumn.
Asked what he had personally done to help the environment, Mr Brown said:
“Very quietly we have put solar panels on our home in Scotland quite some
time ago. We have been operating with solar power for some time”.
Previously, his office has refused to discuss this.
Mr Brown’s Scottish home is in Fife, which is not known as a sun trap. He
said: “The irony is my initial instinct was to have wind turbines. We are in
a hill in an exposed area but I was persuaded by people who know about these
things that even in that area — surrounded by massive winds and storms —
solar power was a better way of generating electricity. It has been
successful.
“Of all the different things that we deal with privately rather than
ostentatiously, so as to get on with the business, you can make big changes
and have an impact.”
The panels were installed in 2005. The references to “very quietly . . .
rather than ostentatiously” can be seen as implicit criticisms of David
Cameron, who has talked in public about his own green initiatives, including
putting a wind turbine on his house in Notting Hill.
During a wide-ranging interview with The Times in his first floor study in 10
Downing Street, now known as the Thatcher Room, Mr Brown also had advice for
Fabio Capello, the favourite to become the England football manager. “He’s
got to train up the young players. Do what we’re doing,” he said in
reference to younger members of his Cabinet and Government.
Mr Brown is seeking to regain the political initiative by a series of
announcements to demonstrate his commitment to substance, rather than style,
as he puts it, and to long-term policy decisions. “If we didn’t deal with
energy, or the environment, or planning, or transport, or the infrastructure
challenges, you would say we were not preparing Britain for the future.
“The great irony of British politics is that the big issues are not central to
the debate in the theatre of politics, but they have to be dealt with.”
He quoted Barack Obama, the US Senator and candidate for the Democratic
nomination, about the smallness of the politics set against the bigness of
the challenges.
On the problems of Northern Rock, Mr Brown played down talk of
nationalisation, emphasising that all options were still being considered by
Alistair Darling, the Chancellor.
“There are bids on the table. The one thing you are pretty clear about is that
the depositors have been protected and mortgage holders are in a proper
position. Whatever else, nobody has lost their money.”
Mr Brown said everyone should remember that “those people who are proposing
nationalisation are proposing it only as a means to get it into the private
sector”.
He added: “The eventual outcome, whatever way you look at it, is to move into
the private sector.” But he would not discuss deadlines. “People are looking
at the existing bids at the moment.”
Mr Brown admitted that he was now more concerned about the economic outlook.
“I am worried at the information that’s coming out of America, that it’s
going to have a slower period of growth in the first quarter, that there are
a lot of mortgages being negotiated and foreclosures and repossessions
likely and there’s a slowdown in the housing market already.”
Looking at Britain, he said: “From a situation at the beginning of this year
when inflation was running a lot higher and threatening to go up again, we
have taken quite decisive action to get inflation down.”
He had always believed that this was the “decisive” year for tackling
inflation. “Part of achieving that was the stance we took on public-sector
pay. If Britain had failed to get inflation down, the Bank of England would
not have been able to reduce interest rates and would be in the position
where so often Britain has inflation rising at at time it needs to cut
interest rates. We have managed to get inflation lower to enable us to grow
as an economy without high interest rates.”
Mr Brown linked yesterday’s $100 billion intervention by central banks with
the need for a greater cooperative effort – which “I have wanted to see for
some time” – and his hopes for Europe to adopt a new approach and show some
global leadership. He was keen to emphasise that the central bankers had not
acted under the influence of politics.
Mr Brown had discussed greater coordination when he saw Hank Paulson, the US
Treasury Secretary, on his recent visit to London, but the decision to make
a coordinated intervention in the markets was the central banks’ alone.
His broader point was the need for global organisations – from the World Bank
to the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations to the World Trade
Organisation – that are able to meet the challenges of the times. For
example, he said, he had been discussing with President Bush a plan to see
the World Bank develop into an arm of world environment policy.
Looking forward to the discussion today among EU leaders, he hoped that people
would say that “for the foreseeable future that the focus of Europe is now
on economics, security, trade, economic reform, climate change and not on
institutional debate”.
He argued that “the global agenda would then force Europe to look a internal
economic reform, the liberalisation of utilities, finance, energies in a
consistent way so you genuinely can talk about open markets and trading”.
Mr Brown firmly denied suggestions in Brussels that he was being marginalised.
“That’s not true,” he argued, pointing to the Government’s recent White
Paper, Global Europe, and its input into tomorrow’s EU summit declaration on
globalisation. “I think you’ll find on the debate about global Europe, we
are leading the way.”
On party funding, Mr Brown did not disguise his anger at discovering that
donations made to Labour by David Abrahams had apparently breached the law
on disclosure. He repeatedly said: “I don’t get into the detail of
individual donations. That’s for other people.” Asked about the top ten
Labour donors, he said: “I couldn’t name them at this moment. I do know they
are listed and public and reported by the Electoral Commission. If you ask
me do I know who they are by name, I don’t know who is one, two or three.”
He emphasised his intention to bring forward a Bill on party funding. “We have
the Hayden Phillips proposals. They are a framework in which we can operate
– so that’s national and local ceilings on expenditure, local caps on
contributions and greater transparency. I think that's the way forward.
“Surely the public want us to act quickly and we would be failing in our duty
if we didn’t. One of the things is that the Electoral Commission should have
is a stronger investigative role. Maybe the Electoral Commission could say
let’s look at some of the things you are doing rather than waiting for
things to emerge. You’ve got to remember parties are voluntary organisations
and they do need advice on how they can follow such a complex rulebook.”
Mr Brown was talking on the eve of a hectic two days, starting this morning
with a two-and-a-half-hour session with the Commons Liaison Committee of
senior MPs, then the EU meetings.
In the midst of this activity, he is finding time to write, with others,
another book in his courage series, with the proceeds going to a health
charity devoted to the memory of his late daughter Jennifer.
Wartime Courage will cover World War Two heroes such as members ofthe Special
Operations Executive, who were parachuted into France for clandestine work;
the first holder of the Victoria Cross in the Royal Air Force; the only
person to win the VC on D-Day; and the commandos who landed on the shores of
Normandy ahead of D-Day, and seized German sentries to find out
intelligence.
He gave the example of Eric Liddell, who won a Gold Medal in the Paris
Olympics in 1924 (the highlight of the film Chariots of Fire) and then
became a missionary in China before dying in a Japanese prisoner of war
camp.
Finally, as his staff were telling him about his next meeting, we asked
whether he was enjoying being Prime Minister. “Did I ever think it was going
to be fun? Sometimes you feel that every day there’s a new challenge so you
can never get bored in this job. I think it’s the different challenges over
the last few months have both been interesting and I hope people will look
back and – whether it was floods, or foot and mouth or avian flu or the
financial turbulence – feel that we dealt with them in the right way. And I
think you will find on political funding we acted in the right way.
“All the decisions you make have to be seen in the long term not the short
term. I think people will look at last few months and say what is being
done. You’ll see the health service is in a different position a year from
now from where it was last summer. It’s the same with education and
children. People will take a long term view. You’ ll see quite a distinct
change for the better where we’re in a stronger position.”
So, with all this talk about long-termism, was he talking about a 2010
election. “You’re a very interesting commentator. You would not expect me to
give you a story like that.”
