... a champion of privatisation, attributes the dropping of the ‘re-’ to a fellow Conservative, David Howell, one of the back-room Tory ideas men tinkering obscurely with economic models while Edward Heath and Harold Wilson squared off against the unions in the 1960s and 1970s. (Howell was Thatcher’s first energy minister. He is now Baron Howell of ...

Day 5, Day 9, Day 16

LRB Contributors: On Ukraine, 24 March 2022

... the ‘London laundromat’ has cleaned kleptocratic cash without fear or favour. Since 2008, when Gordon Brown introduced the Tier 1 ‘golden visa’ scheme, 905 Russian millionaires and their families have come to the UK. The scheme was scrapped on 17 February. According to Transparency International, since 2016 ‘Russians accused of corruption or links to ...

When Bitcoin Grows Up

John Lanchester: What is Money?, 21 April 2016

... ten pounds’ worth of gold: the link between currency and gold was ended in 1971, and anyway, Gordon Brown sold off the Bank of England’s gold reserves in the 1990s. The fact is, there’s no answer to the question, ten pounds of what? The ten pound note is worth what it claims it is because the state, in the form of the Bank of England, says so, and we ...

The End of British Farming

Andrew O’Hagan: British farming, 22 March 2001

... rise in the price of fuel could kill many of them off.’Before leaving I had rung a pig farmer, David Barker, whose farm is north of Stowmarket in Suffolk. Barker is 50 years old. His family has been farming pigs in Suffolk for four generations; they have lived and worked on the present farm since 1957. He owns 1250 acres and 110 sows, which he breeds and ...

The Breakaway

Perry Anderson: Goodbye Europe, 21 January 2021

... by the hostility to the euro of the Murdoch press that had helped elect him, soon faded. But Gordon Brown’s firm refusal to abandon sterling, made from his position of strength at the Exchequer, maintained the status quo bequeathed by Major. London would sign up to the Social Chapter that Major had sidestepped, but despite increasingly frantic pressure ...

Market Forces and Malpractice

James Meek: The Housing Crisis, 4 July 2024

... in the national consciousness but never quite join together as a narrative. It was here that Gordon Brown had his fateful encounter with Gillian Duffy, whom he was recorded calling a ‘bigoted woman’ during the 2010 election campaign. It was here that organised groups of men sexually abused young teenage girls, whose complaints were initially ...