Bloomsbury
£16.99, 244 pages
ISBN 074753701-1
This book is a full, behind the scenes portrait of Gordon Brown’s first year as Chancellor.
Gordon Brown, Ed Balls and many colleagues in the first Brown Treasury gave Nick Kochan and Hugh Pym many interviews to assist their research for this book. These interviews provide highly revealing insights into the early thinking of Brown and his coterie. They provide a study of the exercise of power and of what was then called ‘New Labour’. We hear that term rather less nowadays.
A transcript of some of these interviews are available for download so that interested observers can understand the approach and personality of some of the most powerful politicians in the UK today. Other transcripts will follow soon.
The interviews were given almost a decade ago, when Brown and his coterie were in power but also in ‘Opposition’. Much has changed, but the reader might also conclude that much remains the same.