Gordon Brown: I didn't think I'd see child poverty again in my lifetime

Ex-chancellor’s tax credits started to erase problem – but universal credit reverses trendGordon Brown is on familiar territory. The former prime minister is parked on a sofa in a family centre in the heart of his old constituency and holding forth about poverty.The venue, a family centre called the Cottage, is in the Templehall part of Kirkcaldy and easy to miss. The poverty that it is helping to alleviate is not. When it launched its first Christmas appeal eight years ago – t