Brown and Friends 
David Runciman
Gordon Brown, like all prime ministers, like all politicians, like all of us really, is over-reliant on the advice of a small group of people he thinks he can trust. In Brown’s case, these tend to be men who once worked as juniors in his office, having been hand-picked at a very young age. Douglas Alexander became Brown’s researcher and speechwriter when he was in his early twenties. So did Ed Miliband. Ed Balls joined Brown when he was only 27, after a spell at the Financial Times, and they have been joined at the hip ever since. Despite the fact that two of the three (Alexander and Balls) were deeply implicated in the disaster of the election-that-never-was, it is still this group that Brown turns to first (by all accounts, first thing in the morning) for guidance, reassurance and schemes of revenge. It means that Brown has become dependent on the advice of people who were once entirely dependent on him. This cannot be healthy.
Subscribers to the print edition can log in to view the entire article. For information about subscribing to the London Review of Books click here. This article and the back issue are also available for purchase online. Buy this article / Buy this back issue
David Runciman’s new book is Political Hypocrisy: The Mask of Power from Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond.
Other articles by this contributor:
Oh, the curse! · David Runciman hits a home run
Tax Breaks for Rich Murderers · Bush and the ‘Death Tax’
The Garden, the Park and the Meadow · After the Nation State
Liars, Hypocrites and Crybabies · Blair v. Brown
This Way to the Ruin · the British Constitution
The Cattle-Prod Election · The Point of the Polls
Invented Communities · post-nationalism
Cricket’s Superpowers · Beyond the Ashes
print layout
tell a friend