Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #81664 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 528 pages

Independent
'Intensively researched but coolly critical...this remains the
most thorough biography we have.'

The Times
'What makes this worth reading is Bower's damning indictment of
Brown's main boast: his supposedly sure stewardship of the economy.'

Synopsis
The gripping inside story of the complex and ambitious Chancellor of the Exchequer -- and Prime Minister in waiting. Gordon Brown's arrival at the Treasury in May 1997 was greeted with great excitement -- not to mention anticipation. Officials of every rank looked on expectantly to see what miracles the chancellor would work. And so, as Master of the New Era, Brown created relationships across every Whitehall department and extended his influence to every aspect of government. He brought into effect the most important budgetary changes of the past decade: the commitment to Private Finance Initiative, which altered infrastructure from the London Underground to the NHS and state schools; the management of the Inland Revenue; the increase in taxes; and the demise of Britain's pension funds. In this gripping and fully updated biography, reissued to coincide with Brown's assumption of Tony Blair's mantle, best-selling author Tom Bower documents the rise to power of a driven and complex politician, and exposes how the ambitions of the Labour Party's leader-in-waiting will affect the country for decades to come.

Customer Reviews

Well, knock me down with a haggis?
First of all I have to admit I 'speed read' this book in one afternoon; not because it was boring but because I was short of time. I also have to admit that I don't have more than an average voter's skill in remembering political events. I started off thinking "this is a hatchet job" changing my mind to "murderous hatchet job" and then to "oh, my, what have we got ourselves into?" Every biography/autobiography is necessarily subjective and every event distorted by being remembered, but one can't help feeling, after reading this book, that we, the hapless, tax paying voters may remember New Labour not quite in the way that its progenitors intended when we finally get to find out the truth (or as near as we are ever going to get). Will they raise a statue to Gordon Brown?

"Hello-style" Biography
Tom Bower's book is disappointing from several standpoints.
The first is that most of his quotations are unattributed. This really questions whether they were true. Or, did he just make them up and embroider them a bit? This devalues the whole text - what can we believe?

Then, he occasionally tells us that "X" thought something, when I am sure that he had no way of knowing what that person was thinking at that time. Wishful thinking perhaps.

He has taken the majority of his material from newspapers and we all know how inaccurate and biased they are! He doesn't seem to read books.

This book was serious waste of paper; it jumped to conclusions without substantiating them. It wanted to prove a point but just screamed headlines instead. It was not a balanced political biography.

If only 10% is true
If only 10% of this book is true we are dealing with a VERY dangerous Prime Minister who after 10 years of waiting hasn't a clue what to do and is so indicisive he can't even buy his own clothes.

The indications are that he will be a poor PM but we will see.

A book worth reading if you want to be shocked about the billions wasted in the last 10 years ... I was.