James Gordon Brown (born 20 February 1951) is a British (British people) Labour politician (Labour Party (UK)) and the Member of Parliament for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (UK Parliament constituency)). He was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader (Labour Party (UK)#Leaders of the Labour Party since 1906) of the Labour Party (Labour Party (UK)) from 2007 (Labour Party (UK) leadership election, 2007) until 2010 (UK general election, 2010). Brown became Prime Minister in June 2007, after the resignation of Tony Blair and three days after becoming leader of the governing Labour Party. Immediately before this he had served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government (Blair Ministry) from 1997 (UK general election, 1997) to 2007 under Tony Blair. His tenure ended in May 2010, when he resigned as Prime Minister and leader of the Labour party.

Brown has a PhD in History from the University of Edinburgh and spent his early career working as a television journalist. He has been a Member of Parliament since 1983; first for Dunfermline East (Dunfermline East (UK Parliament constituency)) and since 2005 for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. As Prime Minister, he also held the offices of First Lord of the Treasury and the Minister for the Civil Service.

Browns time as Chancellor was marked by major reform of Britains monetary and fiscal policy architecture, transferring interest rate setting powers to the Bank of England, by a wide extension of the powers of the Treasury (HM Treasury) to cover much domestic policy and by transferring responsibility for banking supervision to the Financial Services Authority. Controversial moves included the abolition of advance corporation tax (ACT) relief in his first budget, and the removal in his final budget of the 10% "starting rate" of personal income tax which he had introduced in 1999.

After initial rises in opinion polls, Labour performed poorly in local and (United Kingdom local elections, 2009) European election results in 2009 (European Parliament election, 2009). A year later, Labour lost 91 seats in the House of Commons (House of Commons of the United Kingdom) at the 2010 general election (United Kingdom general election, 2010), giving the Conservative Party (Conservative Party (UK)) a plurality and resulting in a hung parliament. On 10 May 2010, Brown announced he would stand down as leader of the Labour Party, and instructed the party to put into motion the processes to elect a new leader. On 11 May 2010, Brown officially resigned as Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party. He was succeeded as Prime Minister by David Cameron.