Gordon Brown, ‘Britishness’ and the Negation of England

Abstract

On becoming leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister, Gordon Brown sought to distance himself from the previous decade of New Labour government under Tony Blair. He claimed that the security, environmental and economic challenges confronting the United Kingdom in the decade ahead would require‘a new government with new priorities’.¹ This would mean ‘a new kind of politics in this country’ and ‘a new style of government in the future’, delivered by a ‘servant state’. The past propensity for the British state to intervene, through ‘a top-down approach’ with ‘a government that simply pulled the levers’, would no longer be viable. As an alternative, Brown’s new politics necessitated ‘a more accountable government, a stronger parliamentary democracy and a more active population’.² To demonstrate his own and his colleagues’ commitment to the new politics and new style of government, the early weeks of the Brown Government witnessed the publication of a draft legislative programme and a Green Paper on constitutional reform. In a sign of the political, legal and historical confusion to come, both documents were called The Governance of Britain, even though they referred to the legislative programme and constitutional future respectively of the United Kingdom.³