Gordon Brown calls for global government to tackle coronavirus
NB: Finally a recognition that global problems - emergencies such as this, and global warming - must be and can only be dealt with by concerted, co-ordinated global effort. Not with power-politics, nationalist rhetoric and one-up-manship. Not propaganda and misinformation. Wake up people! DS
Gordon Brown has urged
world leaders to create a temporary form of global government to tackle the
twin medical and economic crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The former Labour
prime minister, who was at the centre of the international efforts to tackle
the impact of the near-meltdown of the banks
in 2008, said there was a need for a taskforce involving world leaders,
health experts and the heads of the international organisations that would have
executive powers to coordinate the response.
A virtual
meeting of the G20 group of developed and developing countries,
chaired by Saudi Arabia, will be held on Thursday, but Brown said it would have
been preferable to have also included the UN security council. “This is not something
that can be dealt with in one country,” he said. “There has to be a coordinated
global response.”
Brown said the current
crisis was different to the one he was involved in. “That was an economic
problem that had economic causes and had an economic solution.“This is first and
foremost a medical emergency and there has to be joint action to deal with
that. But the more you intervene to deal with the medical emergency, the more
you put economies at risk.” During the financial
crisis, Brown persuaded other global leaders of the need to bail out the banks
and then hosted a meeting of the G20
in London, which came up with a $1.1tn rescue package. Despite Donald Trump’s
“America first” policy, he said it was still possible to get support for an
emergency body with executive powers....
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/mar/26/gordon-brown-calls-for-global-government-to-tackle-coronavirus
