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Gordon Brown spoke very well at TED. Yes, you read that right. He was charming, moving, passionate, frank and deeply moral - the prime minister we wish he had, not the one we think we’ve got.

I was particularly impressed by the way Brown referred to the “corrupt” Burmese regime, or the “fixed” Zimbabwean election. Hardly world-changing views I know, but he did so in a direct, down-to-earth way, without any sense that he was posturing or grandstanding.

One philosophical note. At the beginning of his talk, Brown shows a series of iconic photos of suffering and poverty. Their importance, he says, lies in their form:

What we see unlocks what we cannot see. What we see unlocks the invisible ties and bonds of sympathy that bring us together to become a human community.

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith set out to explain why humans were able to form moral judgements, given our natural inclination towards self-interest. The answer, he found, lay in the visual sense.

Smith decided that it was the sight of observing others which made people aware of themselves and the morality of their own behavior. Knud Haakonssen, the editor of TMS, writes that in Smith’s theory

Society is … the mirror in which one catches sight of oneself, morally speaking.

Brown has consistently argued that the Left can claim Adam Smith just as well as the Right. Here’s another sense in which that is true.

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