But it hasn’t just escaped the fringes. More than any other senior politician, Mr Brown has come up with a series of proposals which he says Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak could implement without delay. Writing in The Observer at the weekend, Mr Brown said the Prime Minister and the two Tory leadership candidates must agree emergency measures this week and, if they don’t, “Parliament will have to be recalled to give them force them to do so.” And in typical Gordon Brown apocalyptic language, he called for an emergency budget before “a financial time bomb” in October “sends shockwaves through every household and pushes millions over the edge”. Cost of living crisis ‘getting worse by the day’ – live updates Then, in Monday’s Daily Mirror, came another firm suggestion. “Cobra, the government’s emergency disaster committee, should be in permanent session to address the coming fuel and energy crisis,” he wrote. “Even if Boris John is on holiday, his deputies should be negotiating to buy new supplies of oil and gas from other countries. And they should urgently build extra storage capacity.” All sound suggestions that the government could seriously consider. Instead, while the prime minister has been on holiday, Ms Truss and Mr Sunak have been sparring in an increasingly sterile debate over tax cuts versus “handouts”, as Ms Truss calls them. Mr Brown’s call to arms was quickly backed by Tony Dunker, the boss of the CBI bosses’ organisation, who called for “all hands to the pump” and “to rev the Whitehall machine into action”. Speaking to Sky News, Mr Brown spoke about the difficulties facing families with all the passion and evangelical fervor we’ve come to expect from this “son of the manor”. He spoke movingly of seeing poverty in his hometown of Fife, “which I never expected to see again in my lifetime”. Sad – and shocking. He also said the charities were supplying duvets, sleeping bags, hot water bottles and blankets “because they know people can no longer afford to heat their homes”. Also, Mr Brown said, religious groups were “considering opening up their church halls as heating hubs so that pensioners, instead of freezing at home, have a warm place to go”. Could it really come to that? The former prime minister is bringing all his crusading zeal to bear on the cost of living crisis and even the most inveterate critic would certainly applaud him for it. (Well, apart from former Tory chairman Oliver Dowden, it seems. He rather wryly told Sky News he wouldn’t “take massive lessons” from Mr Brown after he gave pensioners a 75p rise when he was chancellor in 1999.) Use Chrome browser for more accessible video player 7:34 “I’m not taking lessons from Gordon Brown” Some Labor campaigners must be wondering, however, why it is the former prime minister, who left the Commons in 2015, who is leading the cost of living crisis and not Sir Keir Starmer and his top team. Labor insist Mr Brown’s high-profile interventions are part of a wider, coordinated Labor campaign. This may well be true. But unfortunately for the Labor leader, the headlines he attracted this summer were over a silly row with his MPs over picket lines and his failure to register freebies and the sale of a plot of land. However, Labor supporters hoping for a Gordon Brown return to the political front line will be disappointed. “When you’re out, you’re out,” he told Sky News. But for many, he remains a politician of enormous stature and influence and is making it count in this cost-of-living crisis.
