Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has compared Sir Keir Starmer’s plans for a four-man cabinet to revolutionary communist China.
Mr Brown said he was “shocked” by reports that Labor was planning to form a new four-person executive cabinet if it won the next election.
Speaking at an event with former Conservative prime minister Sir John Major, Brown said they would both be “very shocked and surprised if this works”.
The Times reported last week that Sir Keir was considering forming a new cabinet, including himself, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, deputy leader Angela Rayner and the shadow treasurer of the Duchy of Lancaster. Chancellor Pat McFadden.
Mr Brown told an Institute for Government (IfG) audience that the proposal “may require further study”.
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“The suggestion is an inner cabinet for four people, I think [Sir] John [Major] I would be totally shocked and surprised if this worked. “
He said the Quadrangle would be “very difficult”, adding: “The historical experience has been quite ominous, if I may say so – Herod was part of the Quadrangle that ruled the Roman Empire .”
Referring to the Gang of Four who led the Chinese Communist Party with Chairman Mao during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, he said: “You can take it all the way to more recent times, the Gang of Four, if I remember correctly, did not survive Come down and tell the story.”
He continued: “So I think the idea of an internal cabinet may need further work.
“I doubt, as John said, that the other 20 cabinet members would be happy if they were told that they were not part of this inner circle.”
According to the Times, the new four-member executive cabinet will make strategic decisions that will then be presented to the full cabinet, while a series of new “mission committees” may also be established to further Labour’s commitment to growing the economy and reforming the public. Serve.
Mr Brown and Sir John spoke as the IFG released a new report advocating for the disbandment of the Cabinet Office and the creation of a new, smaller Executive Cabinet Committee made up of ministers appointed by the Prime Minister.
Sir John admitted in a speech to the think tank that the 32-member cabinet had become “too large and unwieldy” but argued there were “real flaws” in a formal internal cabinet proposed in the report, including that it would alienate those who support people. exclude.
Elsewhere in his speech, Brown, who was chancellor before becoming prime minister, urged the Treasury to step out of its “comfort zone” and implement a “turnaround strategy” for the economy.
“Our economy is in an existential decade,” he said.
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“We’re at half the level of growth we were in the last two or three decades. Our productivity levels are even lower now. Growth rates are lower now than they’ve ever been.”
“If we want to see an economic recovery this decade, we can’t govern the way we’ve been doing.
“We need to think with almost military precision about how to put our economy on a war footing so that we can address the problems I just identified.”
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