[PDF file]: […] what the bankers call a reverse takeover. The scale is mindblowing. RBS’s £2 trillion of liabilities dwarfs not only the government reserves but the entire UK economy. Brown hasn’t so much nationalised the banks, he has bank-ised the nation.’ 4 Nelson used the term ‘bankocracy’, which I thought was recent; Anne Pettifor has used […]
[PDF file]: […] by the CIA. Jonathan Kwitney of the Wall Street Journal tracked down one Paul Sakwa, who told him that he had been the case officer for Irving Brown, the most important CIA agent in the labour movement in Europe, handling Brown’s budget of between $150,000 and $300,000 a year, between 1952 and 1954. From […]
[PDF file]: […] hold such a referendum – and the ways found to avoid it – are discussed by the late Giles Radice in his book Trio: Inside the Blair, Brown, Mandelson Project (London: I.B.Tauris, 2010). Contradictions rose early on. Peter Mandelson, Minister without Portfolio, was tasked with circulating around European capitals, as Blair’s special emissary, reassuring […]
[PDF file]: […] be no trade surplus and 50 Tony Benn, Conflicts of Interest: Diaries 1977-80 (London: Hutchinson, 1990) pp. 280/1. Edward Pearce’s biography of Healey, Denis Healey (London: Little Brown, 2002) p. 508, attributes the decision to Healey supported by Treasury ministers Lever and Barnett; with the kicker that the fund notion was rejected in part […]
[PDF file]: […] continued Thatcher’s neoliberalism, with successive left-wing administrations actively encouraging the excesses of the financial sector’. (p. 245) Obviously, the first problem here is whether the Blair or Brown governments were in anyway ‘left-wing’. Towards the end of the book, he writes that ‘(t)here is no more brazen example of how Britain has been flogged […]
[PDF file]: […] write proper biographies. Over 35 years he has published studies – basically investigative journalism – of Klaus Barbie, Robert Maxwell, Tiny Rowland, Mohamed Al-Fayed, Geoffrey Robinson, Gordon Brown, Conrad Black, Bernie Ecclestone, Simon Cowell, Richard Branson, Tony Blair and Prince Charles. Working for the BBC from 1970, he reported for and then produced Panorama. […]
[PDF file]: […] opposing the forces of globalisation and neo-conservatism meant they would never win a general election.24 Changes begun under Neil Kinnock were continued by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown when they became more or less joint party leaders in 1994 and then took office in 1997. Several wars, the banking crisis (and the longest recession […]
[PDF file]: […] rate inflicted pain on industry, and having given up control over the setting of interest rates to the Bank of England on taking office, there was little Brown could do about this.’ (p. 249) By the time Labour won the 1997 election, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair had learned the central mantras of neo-liberalism: […]
Contents What went wrong, Gordon Brown? How the dream job turned sour Edited by Colin Hughes London: The Guardian, 2010, £8.99 The End of the Party: The Rise and Fall of New Labour Andrew Rawnsley London: Penguin/Viking, 2010, £25.00 Ghost Dancers David John Douglass Hastings: Christie Books, 2010, £12.95 The Silent State: Secrets, Surveillance […]
