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Category: Gordon Brown

What will the Milibands do about Gordon?

What will the Milibands do about Gordon?

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Should they back him for International Development Secretary? According to Guido Gordon Brown is taking soundings about making a return to the Labour front bench as Shadow International Development Secretary. When Labour is in opposition the members of the shadow cabinet are not decided by the leader but by the parliamentary which votes on the 19 places. The plan is for this to take place once the new leader is in place. If Gordon is serious about this, and we’ve…

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Is this just becoming a big distraction?

Is this just becoming a big distraction?

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The Mandy serialisation – Day 3 On a day when the big political news could have been the parliamentary battles and votes on the budget VAT increases it’s the Mandy book serialisation in the Times that’s likely, once again, to provide the big talking point. Today in another extract devoid, it apears, of much detail, the focus is on the the Brown-Blair relationship and the tensions between the them. This is how the Guardian reports it: “The relationship between Tony…

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“Labour: F***ked, futile, and finished..”

“Labour: F***ked, futile, and finished..”

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SkyNews Will Mandy’s VAT revelation hurt his party? According to the SkyNews today’s extract in the Times from has this description of a general election planning meeting from last October. ” …Harriet Harman proposed basing the party’s election campaign around three Fs: future, family and fairness. The former Business Secretary recounts that other ministers proposed their own Fs. “How about f****d?” Alistair Darling proposed. “Futile?” said Douglas Alexander. “Finished,” added Lord Mandelson, who was chairing the meeting. He also reveals…

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Mandy: Clegg wanted Brown’s scalp as price for coalition

Mandy: Clegg wanted Brown’s scalp as price for coalition

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But couldn’t we have guessed that anyway? Anybody watching ITV over the weekend could not have avoided the ads by the Times promoting their serialisation of Peter Mandelson’s new book. We were being promised something juicy but what’s emerged overnight is hardly exciting or really new. The first extract is published behind the paper’s pay-wall this morning so for those of us refusing to stump up we have to rely on other papers’ reports to get an idea about what…

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How will history judge this final act?

How will history judge this final act?

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Telegraph The Telegraph has a story that I’m sure will be referred to time and time again when historians come to assess the Brown years. The report goes “…one of Brown’s final acts in the Downing Street bunker was quietly to organise a pay cut for his successor which he must have known would leave him out of pocket to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds…On Brown’s orders, the Prime Minister’s remuneration package was cut from £194,000 to…

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Did Gord and Nick go to the “wrong” universities?

Did Gord and Nick go to the “wrong” universities?

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Election Winning leader Alma mater 1945 Clement Attlee University of Oxford 1950 Clement Attlee University of Oxford 1951 Winston Churchill Non graduate 1955 Anthony Eden University of Oxford 1959 Harold Macmillan University of Oxford 1964 Harold Wilson University of Oxford 1966 Harold Wilson University of Oxford 1970 Edward Heath University of Oxford 1974 Feb Harold Wilson University of Oxford 1974 Oct Harold Wilson University of Oxford 1979 Margaret Thatcher University of Oxford 1983 Margaret Thatcher University of Oxford 1987 Margaret…

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Has Clegg trumped Cameron’s ace?

Has Clegg trumped Cameron’s ace?

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SkyNews What does this do to “Vote Yellow get Brown”? In the eleven days since Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats emerged as a force at the first debate the blue team’s main line of attack has been “Vote Yellow get Brown”. Given the ongoing unpopularity of the Prime Minister and the desire for change being shown in the polls this had a lot of potency which would have dominated the Tories’ final week’s campaigning. That has been knocked on the head…

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