Brown has come full circle since 1988

Tom Bower, the Prime Minister’s biographer, says that Gordon’s reinvention as the socialist who can save capitalism is just the latest in a series of convenient masks he has donned

Gordon Brown would probably prefer to forget his magic moment in the crowded House of Commons exactly 20 years ago, on 1 November 1988. In the midst of a withering attack against Nigel Lawson’s management of the faltering economy, the Labour front bencher pierced the Tory’s façade with deadly accuracy: ‘This is a boom based on credit.’ Labour MPs frenziedly cheered as Brown artfully mocked the forlorn-looking Chancellor for allowing consumption to spiral out of control and for offering consistently wrong forecasts. The Chancellor’s boast about his ‘sound management of the economy,’ scoffed Brown, was worthless. ‘Most of us would say that the proper answer is to keep the forecasts and discard the Chancellor.’ That evening’s newspaper headline intoxicated the aspiring Scotsman: ‘veteran chancellor bloodied by upstart’.