Gordon Brown
Bank Reform Won’t Work
‘The subtitle of the Financial Services Bill should be “We think Gordon Brown got it wrong”‘
A Tribal Games
‘Perhaps visiting anthropologists would describe us as crazy. But Britain’s triumph in the Olympics is a tribute to the wisdom and foresight of its tribal leaders’
Mendacious Mervyn
‘If Mervyn King should be awarded a medal for his bravery before a solid redoubt of fact, he also deserves a prize for the exceptional selectiveness of his memory’
The Odd Couple who Presided over Disaster
Alistair Darling was the luckless understudy to Gordon Brown and Mervyn King as they led Britain into an avoidable recession
Gordon Brown’s Recessional
The former prime minister didn’t save the world after the Great Crash of 2008. Instead, his actions only made things worse
In Credit from the Crunch
‘Has the banking crisis cost the taxpayer £2 billion, £131 billion or £500 billion?’
Is the Party Really Over for Labour?
Andrew Rawnsley, the author of the investigative bestseller about the Blair-Brown years, looks forward to the General Election with Standpoint‘s columnist Nick Cohen and the Editor, Daniel Johnson
All to Play For as Cameron Wobbles
For two years, a Conservative victory looked to be a done deal — then the polls narrowed. Are the voters having second thoughts?
Gordon Brown: the Fear and the Filth
Running a ‘spoiler’ is the most joyous pleasures the rat like editor can experience. He knows that a rival paper has a great story coming, so he works out what he can about it and publishes another paper’s exclusive as his own. The Mail on Sunday seems to have done just that with its pre-emptive strike on my Observer colleague’s Andrew Rawnsley’s forthcoming book which is due out in a month.
Let down by Hazel Blears
Deceit and duplicity are the cornerstones of Gordon Brown’s government – an administration so long in the waiting that like the fruit of the medlar tree it went rotten before it was ripe. From Brown’s unchallenged ascension to the Premiership, to his persistent refusal to call an election, to the Damien McBride scandal, this is a government characterised by cowardice.
Why Remoaners should back Boris
“Boris, ironically, now offers Remoaners the best chance of a soft Brexit, or at least a sensible one. And to those who want a second referendum—’the people’s vote’—there may even be a chance of that too.”
On the road
“In the summer of 1980, in the grip of some Kerouac-ish fantasy, I opted to hitch-hike from Laredo to New York”
Discovering the Great War of China
A third of a million Chinese labourers helped the Allies defeat the Kaiser, but their huge unsung contribution ended in betrayal