Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown is at the Edinburgh International Book Festival today to give a talk called ‘First Among Equals.’ Audience members will be charged £12 to hear Brown’s ‘painfully honest account’ of the ‘highs and lows’ of his political career.
Alas, Mr S has reasons to believe though that Brown may be offering a rather specific account when he speaks today. On the festival website he is hailed as ‘one of the most formidable chancellors that Britain has ever seen’ by an unnamed political journalist. It’s a quote Brown has used once before, to promote his book My Life, Our Times which came out in November 2017. But who is the journalist, and where does the quote come from?
Mr S can reveal that the mystery man is in fact the Guardian’s Andrew Rawnsley, who reviewed the Labour leader’s book when it came out in 2017. While the quote is correct, Brown leaves out the fact that the rest of the review is far from glowing. Choice quotes include:
‘For such a clever man, Brown can be surprisingly dim about how politics works.’
‘He was obsessed about [leadership] when he was plotting to supplant Blair; he remained obsessed even once he had prised him out; and he continues to be just as obsessed these many years later.’
‘He frequently looked swamped by the sheer volume and velocity of decision-making that is required of a modern prime minister.’
‘He instead devoured mammoth amounts of time and energy – and wasted that of many colleagues as well – in the destructively obsessive pursuit of the premiership, a job that, when he finally got it, overwhelmed him.’
Presumably there just wasn’t room on the website…
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