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Stafford Cripps: A Political Life 
by Simon Burgess.
Gollancz, 374 pp., £25, November 1999, 0 575 06565 6
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... When the Guardian covered the recent Budget, it had a lot of fun unpacking the surprises sprung by Gordon Brown in the course of his demonstration that ‘all this prudence is for a purpose.’ The point was that his ‘updated Protestant work ethic’ offered rewards both for individuals and for the nation as a whole, in the form of tax cuts and increases in public spending ...

Short Cuts

Paul Laity: Hanging out at River Cottage HQ, 14 December 2006

... authenticity – foraging in the hedgerows, ethical food shopping – that would seriously trouble Gordon Brown or David Cameron, both happy to make green gestures but steadfastly wary of state action to enforce restrictions on personal freedom or curb corporate power. ‘We’ve all got our roles to play, in terms of the choices we make as ...

After the May Day Flood

Seumas Milne, 5 June 1997

... initial accumulation of worthwhile, but mostly marginal, gestures. The first was the decision by Gordon Brown to hand responsibility for monetary policy over to unelected officials at the Bank of England – supposedly balanced by the subsequent removal of the Bank’s unhappy role in regulating financial services. This was presumably the kind of thing ...

Pound Foolish

Kit McMahon, 9 May 1996

Politics and the Pound: The Conservatives’ Struggle with Sterling 
by Philip Stephens.
Macmillan, 364 pp., £20, March 1996, 0 333 63296 6
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... be required reading for anyone aspiring to be either Chancellor or Prime Minister. Let’s hope Gordon Brown and Tony Blair are studying it carefully. They can legitimately enjoy the more egregious mistakes made by the Tories since 1979, but they should be sparing with their scorn. They should remember the errors of previous administrations; and be ...

Family History

Miles Taylor: Tony Benn, 25 September 2003

Free at Last: Diaries 1991-2001 
by Tony Benn.
Hutchinson, 738 pp., £25, October 2002, 0 09 179352 1
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Free Radical: New Century Essays 
by Tony Benn.
Continuum, 246 pp., £9.95, May 2003, 9780826465962
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... spent force. Voted off the NEC in 1993, he could only watch as first John Smith and then Blair and Gordon Brown modernised the Party. That they did so from Millbank Tower, built on the site of the house in which Benn was born, added pathos to the triumph of New Labour over old. The fate of the Bennite Left under New Labour underlines the point: stalwarts ...

Short Cuts

Daniel Soar: Running Out of Time, 8 January 2015

... and the unreality of time). Steve Richards – a pseudonym, no relation to the biographer of Gordon Brown – may or may not still be in hiding in Dallas; Chris Griscom has latterly retreated to her Light Institute in New Mexico. Nobody of any significance has materialised to replace them. Whatever happened to all the magicians and the ...

Short Cuts

Peter Geoghegan: Brexit and the SNP, 3 November 2016

... calling an independence referendum – ‘Bring it on,’ she said – but she was slapped down by Gordon Brown, under the advice of Alexander’s brother Douglas. Within months she was out of office, forced to resign after failing to declare a £950 donation from a Jersey-based businessman. For the SNP, even defeat has turned out to be a blessing: within ...

Not No Longer but Not Yet

Jenny Turner: Mark Fisher’s Ghosts, 9 May 2019

k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher 
edited by Darren Ambrose.
Repeater, 817 pp., £25, November 2018, 978 1 912248 28 5
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... having a Wile E. Coyote moment: it was a year after the crash and nearly two since Northern Rock; Gordon Brown had been pushed to open the Chilcot Inquiry, established to investigate the behaviour of his predecessor in the run-up to the Iraq War; and the best-known Mark Fisher was Tony Blair’s former arts minister, the Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent ...

The Way Things Are and How They Might Be

Tony Judt and Kristina Božič: An Interview, 25 March 2010

... who were most active in this choice were the most powerful people in Europe: Merkel, Sarkozy and Gordon Brown. With the new constitution of the EU two possibilities were opened. Because the executive power was largely dependent on how the representatives were chosen and who they were the executive power could be either very strong or very weak. We went ...

Wolves in the Drawing Room

Neal Ascherson: The SNP, 2 June 2011

... happened if any of its best and brightest – Robin Cook, Douglas Alexander, Alistair Darling, Gordon Brown, even John Smith – had stayed in Scotland to lead the party and the devolved government at Holyrood? Only Donald Dewar took the train back north and became first minister of Scotland in 1999. It would be good to think that John Smith, who ...

Deliverology

David Runciman: Blair Hawks His Wares, 31 March 2016

Broken Vows: Tony Blair – The Tragedy of Power 
by Tom Bower.
Faber, 688 pp., £20, March 2016, 978 0 571 31420 1
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... might come next. Blair felt he was really getting things done at the point when his struggle with Gordon Brown was over. But it wasn’t because he had worked out how to deal with an obstructive rival; it was because he had ultimately been defeated by him. He was liberated by having little left to lose. Obama has been increasingly willing to assert his ...

More ‘out’ than ‘on’

Glen Newey: Chris Mullin’s Diaries, 27 August 2009

A View from the Foothills: The Diaries of Chris Mullin 
by Chris Mullin.
Profile, 590 pp., £20, March 2009, 978 1 84668 223 0
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... survived in office after ditching his mistress via text message – it’s hard to imagine Gordon Brown getting away with that. But now and again, one hears a keening strain from the old country. On the Alexanderinkatu recently a dress shop was enticing passers-by with ‘Things Can Only Get Better’, the D:Ream chantalong which Labour ran as its ...

Against the Current

Paul Rogers: British Sea Power, 6 February 2020

... carriers to replace the three small Invincible-class ships.This was effected under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and, after many delays and much cost inflation, the navy now has its two super-carriers, the Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales, both equipped with the hugely expensive American F-35 strike aircraft: single-engine planes designed for ground ...

Against Responsibility

William Davies, 8 November 2018

Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism 
by Melinda Cooper.
Zone, 447 pp., £24, March 2017, 978 1 935408 84 0
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... year.) The phrase was used as a way of signalling economic and moral commitment at the same time. Gordon Brown – who liked to cloak redistributive policies in communitarian, traditionalist rhetoric – is said to have been the first to use it, in 1995. The Blair, Brown and Cameron governments all repeatedly claimed ...

Short Cuts

Tariq Ali: So much for England, 23 January 2020

... not be underplayed, it’s worth remembering that the party’s share of the vote was lower under Gordon Brown in 2010 and Ed Miliband in 2015. In terms of seats and numbers, the Conservatives did worse in both 1997 and 2001. The liberal commentariat that was hoping that the Lib Dems would replace Labour as the main party of opposition must be even more ...

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