Why Brown is Too Big for Britain

In Britain, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been all but consumed by a wildfire of parliamentary scandal, Labour Party infighting, domestic-policy missteps and profound national anxiety over an economy in turmoil. He stood down calls for his resignation last week, but if he's not forced out sooner, he's virtually certain to resign after the next election, which must be held within the next 12 months. Brown lacks the tools to stage a comeback at home. And yet around the world, his stature is still rising.

This is the tragedy of Gordon Brown. Qualities that are perceived as weak points at home—his seriousness, his longevity of experience, his plodding intellectuality—are his strong points abroad. Barack Obama, for one, has said the world owes Brown "an extraordinary debt of gratitude" for his leadership on global economic recovery. Odd as it may seem, history may well judge Brown to have been better suited to be prime minister of the world than prime minister of Britain.

Brown's interests are, in a sense, too big for Britain. He was the first major world leader to make climate change an economic issue and, under him, Britain was the first country to put legally binding limits on carbon emissions. He made African debt relief and aid a centerpiece of his foreign policy and, even in these cataclysmic economic times, British aid commitments to Africa have grown as a percentage of shrinking GDP.

The G20 summit Brown organized in London in April was his greatest showcase, at least as viewed from abroad. Having been chancellor of the Exchequer for 10 years, Brown knew many of the presidents and prime ministers personally, and was steeped in the intricacies of the financial system that was collapsing around them. At home, that experience made Brown seem stale, and complicit in creating the mess. At the G20 he was in his element—an instinctively global leader wading through esoterica that most people couldn't grasp, taking charge by dint of his superior knowledge. As Nobel economist Paul Krugman put it, Brown demonstrated a "combination of clarity and decisiveness [that] hasn't been matched by any other Western government."

Brown seems to see himself in a global perspective, too. Last December in the House of Commons he claimed to have "saved the world"—quickly amending that to "saved the banks"—but the words were out. In the run-up to the G20, Brown made it clear in a speech to African leaders that the challenge was "not simply getting out of this financial crisis; it is building a global economy that is a force for justice on a global scale." Such thinking, says Mark Malloch Brown, Brown's special envoy to the G20, is "part of the porridge in Scotland"—part of the prime minister's Calvinist makeup as the son of a Church of Scotland minister.

In Britain, the media coverage of the G20 dwelled on his efforts to cover himself in Obama's stardust and on claims that Brown and Obama failed to get their G20 partners to sign up to fat national--stimulus packages. But Brown was instrumental in persuading the participants to agree on a $1.1 trillion support package to be funneled through the IMF. In the eyes of Brown's inner circle, and many more independent analysts as well, this measure put the brakes on the financial crisis and established the basis of a new world economic order dominated not by America and the rich G8 nations, but by the broader G20, with China, India and others in lead roles. Malloch Brown, a minister in Brown's government, feels the prime minister hasn't had space or good fortune enough for his prowess to shine through. "He's like the tortoise, not the hare," says Malloch Brown. With the end of his tenure at 10 Downing Street in sight, the problem for Brown is obvious: a tortoise like him may need more time than he's got.