Others can acquire much more interest if read after a decent interval, for example those of Lord Donoghue, which brought back vivid memories of my own younger self & what I was doing during the years of power which he describes.
Just before the holiday I read another such: Gordon Brown: The First Year in Power by Hugh Pym & Nick Kochan. Another reader had left it lying on a library table, I picked it up for a skim & decided it was worth a read.
For there it all was, all the elements of the tragedy that unfolded when he finally got what he had wished for for so long.
Pym & Kochan make it very clear how Labour’s obsession with the manipulation of spin & controlling the headlines was, even in that first year, disastrous for them more than for others. For example their own stumbles over whether to join the euro led to self-inflicted wounds because of clumsy & hamfisted attempts to take everybody by surprise & control the reaction, to repeat the coup of their surprise move to give independence to the Bank of England.
The ‘revelations’ of a Blair/Mandelson betrayal of Brown after the death of John Smith had been thoroughly covered three years earlier in John Rentoul’s biography of Blair but blew up into a ferocious storm only after a farcical chapter of accidents over the publication of Paul Routledge’s book on Brown three years later. A row which was, on calmer analysis (when it was too late), was after all about ‘not very much.’
And as to those arguments over whether prime minister Brown had a temper? Well:
Colleagues know before they join the [Brown] team that he has a ferocious temper. He flies off the handle easily when challenged or obstructed, sending opponents into cold sweats & friends into embarrassed silences. Brown’s own silences are so awesome that colleagues know when not to speak out of turn.
All very well for colleagues who are after all also comrades in arms; not so good for others who were appointed to the team.
