UK could become 'a failed state' without reform, former UK PM Brown says

Unless the United Kingdom is fundamentally reformed it could swiftly become a failed state as many people have lost faith in the way the country is governed by, and in the interests of, a London-centric elite, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown said.

"I believe the choice is now between a reformed state and a failed state," Brown wrote in the Daily Telegraph newspaper. "It is indeed Scotland where dissatisfaction is so deep that it threatens the end of the United Kingdom."

"'Whoever in London thought of that?' is a common refrain, reflecting the frustration of people in outlying communities who feel they are the forgotten men and women, virtually invisible to Whitehall," Brown wrote.