Boom Or Bust: The Politics And Legacy Of Gordon Brown Book

This book is primarily about the political philosophy of Gordon Brown and how it evolved during his political life. It is not an account of his time in power and as such is very academic in parts. If you want to read an account of his time in power then I would recommend Tom Bower's excellent book on this subject.
However this book does lay bare his culpability for the global financial crash of 2008 which he has always tried to pin on others. For the 9 years leading up to the crash he was chairman of a major IMF Committee responsible for identifying upcoming problems with the world economy and he completely failed to see what was going on. In addition he was warned many times by the IMF, OECD and EU, as much as 8 years before the crash, about the spiralling debt (public and private) in the UK economy and did nothing about it. The chapter on his policies towards Europe is interesting. On these I think he is on the right side of history. He understood that the EU's overly regulatory approach bred an uncompetitive economy and he tried (and failed) to get them to change their approach. The same problem with the EU persists today and they show no sign of addressing it.