This is the fifth article in a six-piece symposium on Gordon Brown as intellectual. Other articles include:
John Lloyd on an intellectual in power
Iain McLean on other intellectual prime ministers throughout history
Daniel Johnson on Brown the unsophisticated bookworm
Geoff Mulgan on the American inspiration behind Brown’s thinking
Kamran Nazeer on Brown’s book Courage
Discuss this article at First Drafts, Prospect’s new blog
It is an oddity of British politics that at the same time as society is becoming, so most people think, more secular, our political leaders are becoming ever more religious. Britain has a new prime minister immersed in a religious idiom, following on from the deeply Christian Tony Blair, who, in turn, succeeded a member of the Church of Scotland, John Smith, as leader of the Labour party. These three have all been, more or less, Christian Socialists. And they reformed the Labour party in response to the pious Margaret Thatcher, daughter of a lay Methodist minister.
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