The Future Starts With Us
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The Future Starts With Us
Narrated by:
Gordon Kennedy
Buy Now for £16.58
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Narrated by:
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Gordon Kennedy
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By:
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Gordon Brown
Every day we see evidence of the fracturing of the rules-based order. War, mass migration, economic disruption and climate collapse fill our screens.
At the same time, many feel a different kind of fear. The erosion of civic life has led to an epidemic of loneliness, a loss of community spirit and a growing sense that there is nowhere to turn in times of need, no common cause worth fighting for.
But why is it that the breakup of the world order and the breakdown of civic life are happening at the same time? And why is it that millions across the world are turning to populist nationalist parties in search of solutions?
Drawing on decades of experience at the heart of politics, alongside new research and original polling of nearly 100,000 people across forty-five countries, Gordon Brown reveals how global instability and civic decline are connected.
The Future Starts With Us is more than a guide to our present turmoil. By uncovering and targeting the root causes, Brown offers a practical and hopeful roadmap to bring us back together, renew the global order, and set us on a more equitable and sustainable course.
His most urgent insight is that the future will not be decided by the declarations of presidents or prime ministers or at conferences or summits, but by citizens becoming actively engaged in their communities and by what we choose to do together. The change we seek starts here and now. It starts with us.
Gordon Brown, Sunday Times bestseller, September 2026
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Excellent narration, though I would have liked to hear Brown read it himself. One tiny slip near the start of the final chapter says “United Nations” where “United States” is clearly meant.
Thought-provoking, humane and genuinely hopeful
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The first is that the content feels hugely second hand. Rewarmed surface-level Putnam and endless More in Common “exclusive polling” which is very much the same as all the rest of their endless and now ubiquitous polling.
The second is that Brown is a hugely unconvincing advocate of community having for all his life been a relentless top down statist as any casual reader of anything else he has written will know. He is writing about stuff that he clearly isn’t really interested in as a phenomenon (regardless of the nice stuff about Raith Rovers that kicks the book off).
The third is that this book keeps on getting distracted into the stuff Brown does actually care about - economics and top down state action - forgetting its purpose entirely for chapters at a time and betraying the stuff it purports to be advocating for.
The reason to engage with it at all (and it is despite it all worth a read/listen) is the interesting fact that he has written it than its pretty uninspired content. Given the esteem many in Labour hold him in, despite his terrible record as a leader and the long shadow of failure he bequeathed to Labour thereafter, the fact that he is affecting an interest in this sort of stuff must signify something in terms of future Labour thinking.
If only it was a better, more focused and more convincing bit of work.
Disappointing and unconvincing stuff
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