[…] for deeds and orders are taken for their effects. Nor is this a new phenomenon. The political genius of the group that surrounded Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in the 1990s was to see this system for what it was and then to develop rules for the acquisition of power that may have been […]
A. J. Davies Little Brown and Co London, 1995, £20 Davies provides in equal measure a perceptive and comprehensive account of the modern Conservative Party which, hopefully, will lead to further reappraisals of Conservative history. In contrast to, for example, Lord Blake’s standard history of the Party over much the same period, We, The […]
[…] contract by the undiplomatic Geldof to polish the public appearances of the FCO is linked to the closeness of the former Boomtown Rat to Blair and Gordon Brown in last year’s G8 gathering is a question not likely to be asked by the many journalists now on the Geldof payroll. On Ten Alps’ books […]
[…] asking Boothroyd to inform on four MPs was just one of many contacts between MI5 and the Parliamentary Labour Party in the sixties. Four years earlier George Brown, then Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and Chair of the Party’s Organisation Sub-committee, its policing function, approached the journalist Chapman Pincher and told him that […]
Francis Beckett and David Hencke London: Aurum Press, 2004, £18.99, h/b According to Beckett and Hencke, in the late 1980s Nigel Lawson could never understand why Tony Blair was a member of the Labour Party rather than of the Conservative Party. This question subsequently occurred to a growing number of Labour Party members and […]
Edward Pearce London: Little, Brown, 2002, £25, h/b. Compared to the present crop of media-trained, PR-conscious, line-following, careerist pigmies who comprise the current Labour Cabinet, Denis Healey looks like a giant from a golden age. Before his well known roles as Minister of Defence and Chancellor of the Exchequer (during the Tory-induced inflation […]
[…] the only honest man with any bottle on the EU staff, didn’t have to look hard to find corruption: it was everywhere he went.(5) Notes London: Little, Brown, 1999 The Tainted Source: the Undemocratic Origins of the European Idea, (London: Little Brown, 1997) which has recently been remaindered and is around for about a […]
[…] as if Labour, and not Edward Heath (and OPEC) had caused the 1970s inflation. I suspect that by the late 1980s Labour’s leaders – Kinnock, John Smith, Brown – had accepted as fact that it was Labour policies which were responsible for the 1970s inflation. As for ‘New’ Labour’s European policies, in opposition between […]
[…] its piece naming the Guardian’s Richard Gott as ‘the KGB’s British writer-in-residence’.(2) On 27 December the Guardian printed a photograph of Mr G being embraced by Ron Brown, the former MP for Leith, and Bill Michie MP. It was a busy day for Mr Michie, for he was also named in The Times in […]
[…] interesting anecdotes in chapter 7 about Kaiser’s time in Britain as the number 2 at the US Embassy during the first Wilson government. There’s this on George Brown while Labour’s Foreign Secretary: ‘….he was also particularly friendly to America. Several times he went along with Washington’s proposals even though he didn’t fully agree with […]
