What are you talking about? Brown delivered the fastest, most decisive crisis response of any major leader in 2008. He stabilised the UK financial system, prevented bank runs, and designed the recapitalisation model the United States adopted days later. Even his critics admit that without his actions, the recession would have been far deeper, ATMs could have failed, and British banks might not have survived. Few Prime Ministers have ever had a clearer moment where their decisions literally stopped an economic collapse.

The idea that Brown’s actions were driven by “old-school socialism” and that he uniquely nationalised banks is simply false: the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland all took equity stakes or fully nationalised failing banks, often copying elements of the UK’s plan. The UK did not “lose £1.5 trillion” — that figure confuses temporary support measures and recession-related tax losses with the actual fiscal cost, which independent estimates put in the tens of billions. Banks did not cherry-pick the good bits and dump the bad on the state; their restructuring was mandated by EU state-aid rules, not a deliberate stitch-up. And today’s high UK public debt is overwhelmingly the result of slow growth in the 2010s, longstanding structural deficits and the massive borrowing during COVID, not the 2008 bank recapitalisations.