Gordon brown

Frumpy, out of date and not much fun – Gordon Brown and BHS go together in more ways than one.   A word needs to be put in about the role of the former Chancellor and Prime Minister in the collapse of the chain store this week. Dominic Chappell – who must win this year’s business brass-neck award by attempting to buy back BHS days after it collapsed into administration with him at the helm — was perhaps not the kind of entrepreneur that Gordon Brown had in mind in 2001 when he published a white paper, Enterprise for All, which led to the 2002 Enterprise Act.  But intentionally or not,

In 2000, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, accused Magdalen College, Oxford, of class bias in failing to admit a student called Laura Spence, a pupil at a Tyneside comprehensive. This was grossly unfair — how could the Chancellor know the details of a particular case? It was also outrageous in principle: why should a politician tell a university whom to admit? This Sunday, David Cameron did much the same thing. In the middle of his EU negotiations, the migrant crisis and the other genuinely important things the Prime Minister must deal with, he found time to offer an article to the Sunday Times, headlined ‘Watch out, universities;

Claiming credit for things that are nothing to do with you is where trouble starts in politics. You can claim that you have abolished ‘boom and bust’, even when occasionally qualified as ‘Tory boom and bust’, but the economy will disprove you – as Gordon Brown spectacularly found out during the Global Financial Crisis. George Osborne has, of course, mimicked Brown from the outset. He has promised deficit reduction he has never yet delivered, and a rebalancing of the economy that has proved to be just so much hot air. Both of these are unnecessary, self-inflicted injuries reminiscent of Brown. On Monday, Osborne and Bill Gates announced a fund of

When David Cameron was photographed scoffing Pringles on an Easy Jet flight over the summer, he became the subject of much mockery online. However, there was one woman who fiercely leapt to his defence, arguing that he deserved better than a budget snack on a budget airline. ‘David Cameron deserves official jet,’ Fiona Phillips declared in the Mirror. ‘He’s our Prime Minister for goodness sake.’ Alas, Phillips may soon be rethinking her approach when it comes to the Prime Minister. It appears that any fondness the former GMTV presenter holds towards Cameron — who she has met a number of times — is not reciprocated. During a Media Focus talk, Damian McBride recalls a conversation Cameron once had about Phillips

After stepping down as an MP ahead of the general election, Gordon Brown has taken up a role on the advisory panel of Pimco, a global investment management firm. He joins a panel of ‘world-renowned experts’ who include Jean-Claude Trichet, the former president of the European Central Bank, and Ben Bernanke, the former US Federal Reserve chairman. Pimco have released a statement speaking of their delight at their global advisory board which they say boasts ‘an unrivalled team of macroeconomic thinkers and former policymakers’: ‘The global advisory board is an unrivalled team of macroeconomic thinkers and former policymakers, whose insights into the intersection of policy and financial markets will be a valuable input to our investment process.’

Given that Jeremy Corbyn has been on the receiving end of a barrage of bad press this morning, he could do with the help of an expert spinner. Yet everyone who has cared about the Labour Party over the years is appalled at his triumph; no one is willing to defend him. No one, that is, except the currently ‘freelance’ former king of spin, Damian McBride. The disgraced spin doctor appears to have been on a mission to endear himself to Corbyn ever since he won the leadership election on Saturday. He kicked things off with an editorial in the Mail on Sunday titled ‘Jeremy Corbyn may be the best thing since Clement Attlee’. Yes, seriously. Corbyn,

Gordon Brown has announced he is backing Yvette Cooper in the Labour leadership contest. In a statement on his website, the former Prime Minister has revealed Cooper will be his first preference vote, while Andy Burnham will be number two and Liz Kendall number three. It’s a surprising move, given that Brown delivered a barnstorming speech on the state of the contest just over a week ago and declined to back any particular candidate. Without naming him, Brown was railing against Jeremy Corbyn and appears to have decided Cooper is the best person to beat him.  His predecessor Tony Blair has also intervened in this contest but so far has yet to reveal which candidate he

Gordon Brown has just given one of his saving-the-world-at-the-last-minute speeches. He was speaking just as the ballot papers for his party’s leadership election are being sent out, and in keeping with his other saving-the-world-at-the-last-minute speeches, particularly the one he delivered shortly before the Scottish referendum, it was a barnstormer. His main theme was the importance of getting Labour into shape so that it can be in power in order to carry out its moral mission. Brown argued that ‘it is not an abandonment of principles to seek power and to use that power in government. It is the realisation of principles’. He described the party as being broken-hearted after losing

Poor old David Lammy. At 11pm last night, the Labour mayoral hopeful tweeted that his mum had depended on tax credits so he supports them now. Twitter went wild, saying that they were only invented in 2003 so he must have been fibbing! Even Derek Draper got stuck in. And, oddly, the story has grown since then – in spite of being utter nonsense. Lammy wasn’t quick enough to rebut, and the non-story ends up being followed up in The Guardian. After a child poverty campaign in 1970, tax credits were introduced (as a temporary measure) by Ted Heath in 1971. The aim, then as now, was to precision-bomb welfare upon certain families working

‘Put that on your leaflets,’ snarled Cameron at PMQs. Inwardly he was gloating. Labour voted against Tory welfare reforms last night so the PM was able to boast that Labour is fighting the new living wage. Some say Cameron is lurching to the left with his Five Year Plans and his state-controlled pay rises. The same applies to law and order. He’s getting a pinkish tinge. Philip Davies asked him to review the regulations governing early release for serious offenders. Cameron said he’d give it a go. It’s not good enough, he seemed to imply, having murderers murdering people shortly after gaining their freedom by promising to become pillars of

George Osborne had a ringside seat for New Labour’s dominance of British politics and you could see the influence that this has had on him in the Budget. First, there was Osborne’s determination to unpick the structural changes that Gordon Brown had made to move British politics to the left. So, Osborne took the axe to tax credits not only limiting the numbers who’ll receive them in future, down from nine out of ten families with children in 2010 to five in ten by 2020, but he also attacked the intellectual rationale for them, arguing that they have actually kept wages down. But the Budget also owed something to Tony

It’s Budget day tomorrow, and as James Forsyth put it recently, George Osborne will never have a better time to do bad things. The Labour party is a complete mess, the quality of scrutiny will be pretty ropey. So if he’s going to pull a fast one, now’s the time. Gordon Brown’s budgets were famous for having a lollipop (a goodie, briefed out to the press) and several weasels (nasties, heavily disguised in the small print). Now, Osborne may well be honest about his good and bad news tomorrow. But his Treasury staff, schooled by years of Brown’s shenanigans, may have persuaded him that the best way to deliver bad news is to

Ed Miliband was praised for his integrity by George Osborne after he returned to the Commons and gave a speech so soon after his election defeat. Although the Conservatives have been happy to pile on the praise towards their old foe, Mr S suspects their enthusiasm will begin to wear thin by the end of the week. The former Labour leader is to dip his toe back into frontline politics by leading a commons debate tomorrow on Hatfield Colliery, the Doncaster coal mine which is closing this week leading to the loss of 430 jobs. Judging by Miliband comments so far on the mine’s early closure, the Tories will be in for a rough