Blair’s guru gives Brown advice

Anthony Giddens tells Fraser Nelson that the Labour  project has to ‘restart’ and that Gordon Brown can no  longer afford to be a ‘closeted Machiavellian figure’

Professor Anthony Giddens, author of The Third Way and intellectual godfather of New Labour, is a hard man to pin down. After days of radio silence an email arrives confirming he can be interviewed; it’s just that he’s tied up in meetings with Colonel Gaddafi. ‘Am in Libya at the moment,’ it reads. ‘We had a very interesting session here, chaired by Sir David Frost.’ An ordinary weekend jaunt for a sociologist who has, in the last ten years, become a kind of guru to the world.

His 34 books have been published in 40 languages and he has been received everywhere from Washington to Moscow. He was director of the London School of Economics for the first six years of this Labour government, then entered the House of Lords.