How Has Labour Done?
My friend and colleague, Austin Mitchell MP, asked me a month or two ago to write a short piece for the House Magazine on the state of the Labour government. He was kind enough to publish it on his own...
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The Democracy Sham
In The Democracy Sham: How Globalisation Devalues Your Vote, Bryan Gould considers the impact of the global economy on the democratic process in a number of countries, including New Zealand and...
View ArticleBritish Labour in 2007
As we enter the new year, the first task for Labour should be to draw a line under an egregious error made in its name – an error that began with an abuse of power and a breathtaking deception of the...
View ArticleBryan Gould on Gordon Brown
The following article was published in the NZ Listener of 14 July. In the ten years after Gordon Brown and Tony Blair entered the House of Commons together in 1983, Gordon was always regarded as the...
View ArticleA Brown Study
The following article by Bryan Gould appeared in the Sunday Telegraph on 21 September The first two months must have been very heaven. The long-awaited prize had been grasped. Opposition from both...
View ArticleSaving Labour
I surely cannot have been the only reader to stop short mid-sentence at Nicholas Watts’ statement (Guardian, 13 January) that Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson had “wrenched Labour out of...
View ArticleSin and the City
Twenty three years ago, the City was excitedly awaiting the Big Bang – the moment which would usher in a new era of self-regulation of the financial services industry. I had a grandstand view of the...
View ArticleWhat’s Left for Labour?
Barring a miracle, and miracles seem likely to be in short supply, Labour will lose the next election. The question is not the survival of the Labour government, but the survival of Labour as a force...
View ArticleLabour’s Coup
The most disturbing aspect of Labour’s latest attempted and abortive coup is neither that it took place nor that it failed. It is the level of incompetence, self-interest and self-delusion in Labour’s...
View ArticleA False Dichotomy
Nothing better illustrates Labour’s current malaise than the reported difficulty the leadership group is having in agreeing on a strategy for an election that is now only a few months away. Some, we...
View ArticleJoy In Heaven – A Sinner Repents
When I left British politics in 1994, the Independent published a leading article in which, alongside some generous comments, they regretted my adherence to “Keynesian macroeconomics” and my “fervent...
View ArticleThe Real Story of the 2010 Election
Let us make some entirely plausible assumptions about the outcome of the general election. Let us assume that the Conservatives attract the largest share of votes, but fall short of a majority either...
View ArticleThe Election the Parties Lost But the Country Won
The general election of 2010 was the most complex, fascinating and important British election of modern times. In one sense, it was the election that no one won. In another – and perhaps more...
View ArticleWhat Is The Point of a Coalition If Only One Voice Is Heard?
Nick Clegg’s performance in the election campaign’s televised debates promised briefly to stand election projections on their head. The voters seemed to decide when the crunch came, however, that more...
View ArticleGood Government Matters
Government over recent times has got itself a bad name. Politicians are of course always regarded as fair game, particularly by media whose proprietors often see themselves as competitors for power,...
View ArticleDo You Want The Good News Or The Bad News?
The May election results delivered what was promised – only more so. The winners and losers were eminently predictable, but the voters’ judgments were unexpectedly savage. The night’s big losers were,...
View ArticleRupert and the Rioters
Rupert Murdoch and his News International have good reason to be grateful to the rioters. They were able to drop out of the headlines themselves, for a time at least, and to report on others making the...
View ArticleLabour Should Challenge Macro-economic Policy
Stewart Wood in this week’s Guardian is right to argue that the paradoxical popular support for George Osborne’s manifestly failing policies for recovery should not mean that Labour must abandon its...
View ArticleI Told You So
Jonathan Freedland, in last week’s Guardian, congratulates the UK Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls, on being able to claim the rare privilege in politics of saying “I told you so”. Balls had warned in 2010...
View ArticleGeorge Osborne’s Deep Hole
Whatever George Osborne may say on Wednesday in his budget speech, he cannot extricate himself from the wreckage that now surrounds him. He may be just about the last person in Britain to believe that...
View ArticleGeorge Osborne’s Non-Event
George Osborne’s budget was driven by an obvious political imperative but was, in economic terms, largely a non-event. The major interest, such as it was, lay in the minor adjustments offered to...
View ArticleAn Economic Policy for Labour
It was significant that, in the seven issues that Tony Blair – in his article last week in the New Statesman – advised Ed Miliband to focus on, there was no mention of the state of the economy. It is...
View ArticleWhat Happened to the Money?
Larry Elliott is right to ask in Tuesday’s Guardian why 16.5 billion of quantitative easing made available by the Bank of England to the commercial banks through the funding for lending scheme has...
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