Gordon Brown
The banks did cause the deficit
The banking crisis gave the UK economy a heart attack and this had a disastrous impact on the public finances.
“The biggest and most far-reaching mistake”
No, I haven’t read much of Gordon Brown’s book, Beyond the Crash. My faltering and dutiful attempt prompted musings on the fascinating and life-enhancing qualities of ditch water.
In my defence, I can only say that few others have made much more progress. Or else someone would have reported by now, seven weeks after it was [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Wednesday, 26 January 2011 at 9:44 pm
Did Gordon Brown go on a spending splurge or not?
48% of GDP? 40% of GDP? Oliver Kamm and John Ross can’t both be right. And it’s not a small difference, particularly in the context of a raging debate about Labour’s handling of the economy.
By Ben Chu | Eagle Eye | Wednesday, 12 January 2011 at 1:20 pm
John Prescott Recants Brownism
Senator Prescott* said some interesting things in a talk on a cruise on Queen Mary 2 (right). The former Deputy Prime Minister was accused by Tony Blair in A Journey of helping Gordon Brown to succeed him:
It’s not that John was ever personally disloyal – he wasn’t – but Gordon pitched his own position on [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Sunday, 9 January 2011 at 1:49 pm
A to Zen of 2010
If you dwell on it long enough, the political landscape of this time last year starts to feel like an era from a bygone age; not a year ago, but more like several decades ago.
By Dr Russell Razzaque | Eagle Eye | Thursday, 30 December 2010 at 3:37 pm
“Corrupted by his ambition”
Adding to the flood of instant history of the Brown government is Anthony Seldon and Guy Lodge’s Brown At 10. You would think that we would be sated by now. But no. After Harriet Harman’s abortive goose plot in the Mail on Sunday serialisation, there is more.
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Thursday, 25 November 2010 at 6:57 pm
The British right’s Irish rollercoaster
It is striking how late in the day the right have started to wake up to Ireland’s structural economic problems. Until very recently Ireland was the neoliberal right’s poster child.
By Ben Chu | Eagle Eye | Thursday, 18 November 2010 at 2:21 pm
Whatever It Took
In a miserable failure of self-promotion by the seventh most popular media blog, I forgot to link to my review of Steve Richards’s excellent book, Whatever It Takes, on Sunday. The title of the book is taken from Brown’s speech at Labour conference in Manchester in September 2008, just after Lehman Brothers went bust: “When people [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Friday, 1 October 2010 at 11:40 am
A Journey: Review of Reviews
Now that I have read A Journey thoroughly, I am reading some of the reviews. Someone with a sense of humour at The Sunday Times had the idea of asking Robert Harris to write one (pay wall). He managed to hold back from mentioning the “disastrous Iraq war” until the eighth paragraph.
If you want a [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Wednesday, 15 September 2010 at 3:14 pm
Darling’s Revenge
Alex Barker and George Parker in the Financial Times report a fine case of a taste of one’s own medicine:
Alistair Darling hid “good news” on the deficit from Gordon Brown until the day before his final Budget, just weeks ahead of the election.
A late revision of the estimate of the deficit cut it from £170bn [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 12 June 2010 at 1:55 pm
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