Search results for ‘Gordon Brown’

873 items found

  • 7 Sep 2009

    Brown, Darling, and public spending cuts

    There will be more tomorrow from Alistair Darling on the government’s plans to outline cuts in public services, in the James Callaghan lecture in Cardiff. The Chancellor wanted to go further on balancing the books than No. 10 allowed him to at the Pre-Budget Report last autumn. Now he feels – after some lengthy conversations…

  • 2 Sep 2009

    Gnomic truths from Brown on the Megrahi row

    The most interesting line in Gordon Brown’s statement today was the most gnomic. “Were we right to spell out to ourselves the consequences of both eventualities, whether it was a Scottish decision for his release or for him remaining in prison? Yes – to have failed to have done so… would’ve been failing in our…

  • 27 Aug 2009

    Does Scottish poll vindicate Brown’s silence on Megrahi?

    The first Scottish opinion poll shows 42% of voters approve of Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill’s decision to let Mr al-Megrahi go home.

  • 26 Aug 2009

    How will Brown pay public tribute to Kennedy?

    Gordon Brown is a politician, like few others in the UK, who knows and reveres the achievements of the Kennedy dynasty, but an on-camera tribute could fuel the row over his silence on Lockerbie bomber release.

  • 25 Aug 2009

    Still no comment from Brown on Megrahi decision

    Gordon Brown appears at No 10 with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, but does not budge on Lockerbie bomber release.

  • 24 Aug 2009

    What lies behind Brown’s silence on Megrahi release

    Why Gordon Brown is being advised to maintain his silence on the release of convicted Libyan al-Megrahi.

  • 29 Jul 2009

    Brown ‘unlikely’ to lead Labour at next election

    A former Cabinet Minister tells me it is “exceptionally unlikely” that Gordon Brown will lead the Labour Party into the next election. Labour rebels acknowledge that some support for the project has gone but claim some new blood is coming in, in particular from the soft left. The argument runs that the “opportunity cost” of…

  • 23 Jul 2009

    A green Brown success?

    When history comes to review the Brown government, it has every chance of proving an unhappy event. Gordon Brown’s takeover from Tony Blair settled uneasily into a sad and dispossessed period of ‘readjustment’ to the global financial catastrophe. But one of history’s other asides in reviewing the Brown government may yet come to rest on…

  • 22 Jul 2009

    Brown’s press conference – a rehearsal for by-election defeat?

    Gordon Brown at his press conference just now sounded like a man rehearsing his lines for Friday when Norwich North looks like getting a Tory MP. He said he thought “people do understand the uniqueness of this by-election” in answer (or rather in reply) to a question about why he deselected Ian Gibson. David Cameron…

  • 2 Jul 2009

    Brown thinks truth row is a distraction

    Just been interviewing the Prime Minister on a train trip north… it’s the nationalised East Coast line and it is now crawling along because of signal problems. Gordon Brown clearly feels that David Cameron has too readily slipped into personal attacks on his integrity over claims that he’s used statistics dishonestly. He thinks the row…

  • 24 Jun 2009

    Brown must fear a badly timed Chilcot report

    Gordon Brown has a habit of upsetting people he’s asked to conduct inquiries. Adair Turner didn’t look like a man who’d like to take up another commission from Gordon Brown after his pensions inquiry. More recently, Sir Christopher Kelly’s team looking at MPs’ expenses was repeatedly publicly harried by No.10 and didn’t appreciate it.

  • 15 Jun 2009

    Who’ll be the judge of Brown’s Iraq war inquiry?

    Gordon Brown will announce an inquiry into the Iraq war this week. My sources tell me that this will not be chaired by a judge, senior or retired. It will be chaired instead by a historian. The hot tip in Whitehall is that it is likely to be the respected Churchill and Holocaust scholar Sir…

  • 10 Jun 2009

    Brown apes Mrs Merton on constitutional reform

    This was Gordon Brown in Mrs Merton mode – “let’s have a heated debate.” On electoral reform, there is nothing the government can do this side of a general election. The Prime Minister is effectively planning the next Labour general election manifesto in which a commitment to electoral reform, some type of additional vote system…

  • 10 Jun 2009

    Constitutional reform: questions for Mr Brown

    Gordon Brown will signal today whether the political classes “get it” when it comes to combating the expenses scandal in parliament. “Getting it” extends well beyond expenses to full-blown reform of our system of governance, as I have written here before.

  • 5 Jun 2009

    Balls! How Gordon’s dream ended

    Alistair Darling saw the Prime Minister last night for a long conversation and made it plain he didn’t think he should be thrown out of the Chancellorship. The chancellor was offered a number of jobs but turned them all down. I believe Mr Darling left still not entirely clear whether he had won his right…