[…] then, in the 1990s, by ‘new’ Labour. The criticisms from the right were reinforced from the left by arguments that Wilson, his Chancellor Jim Callaghan and George Brown, the Secretary of State for Economic Affairs (directly responsible for the National Plan), should have devalued immediately. This view was advocated at the time by Nicky […]
Cherie Blair: Speaking for Myself Cherie Blair London: Little, Brown, 2008, h/b, £18.99 The relentless harrying of Neil Kinnock by the Murdoch press at the time of the 1992 general election outraged Labour Party people, among them Cherie Blair. This was the general election when The Sun proudly boasted that it was its […]
[…] of the story, he is (as Dave Letterman might say) just plain goofy. False Quotation Syndrome He may be worse than that. Researchers Harold Weisberg and Walt Brown, as well as medical expert Dr. Gary Aguilar, have been double-checking Posner’s claimed interview subjects. Apparently, the Warren Commission’s foremost apologist has seriously misrepresented some of […]
[…] secondary bond market, for more than 40 per cent. of global derivatives’ means that much of the chaos of the past year originated in London, while Gordon Brown and Ed Balls were in charge of the Treasury. Which makes Brown’s posturing as the man who will reform the financial world the more ridiculous. Credit […]
[…] made membership of the Euro its principal campaigning issue. Keen single currency enthusiasts on the paper include political editor Andrew Grice, columnists David Aaronovitch and Yasmin Alibhai- Brown (see below), and political commentator and author of the pulped Mandelson biography Donald Macintyre. Still influential at the paper now taking ‘the broader view’ is former […]
Desmond Bristow with Bill Bristow Little, Brown and co., London, 1993 Shoot the marketing department. There is almost nothing about ‘moles’ in this book. The reality is a mildly interesting account of Bristow’s MI6 career from 1940-1956, most of it spent in Spain. A few names are named — but 40 years on, who […]
[…] the Skull and Bones was Prescott Bush Snr., father of the first President Bush. A scion of New York’s financial establishment, Prescott Bush was a director of Brown Brothers Harriman & Company, the oldest private bank in the United States. He was also a director of the Union Banking Corporation, a bank set up […]
David Stirling: the authorised biography of the creator of the SAS Alan Hoe Little, Brown and Co, London 1992, £17.50 As the subtitle suggests, most of this book is taken up with the story of the foundation of the SAS. I didn’t read that section. I read the last third which contains lengthy accounts […]
[…] deep into the heart of the Blair project and into the history of its precursors. Follow Draper, the Labour student initially offered work by Agriculture Minister Nick Brown and then taken up by Trade and Industry Secretary Peter Mandelson, and we get a few insights into New Labour of the ‘stuffing my bank account […]
[…] the two men became friends. (4) A month later the leader of the Labour Party, John Smith, died, and Blair won the leadership election contest with Gordon Brown – in some accounts with financial assistance from Levy. (5) All accounts are agreed that Michael Levy then set about raising money – the figure of […]
