What Gordon told Hugo

I’ve just picked up The Hugo Young Papers – his notes from his meetings with the great and the good. It’s a lively read, if you skip the bits about Europe (well, the bit where Ed Balls stresses his impeccable Europhile credentials is fun), and you see a fascinating glimpse of what Brown says in private conversation. And not all of it is bad. Some extracts, with my comments:-

BRITISH COLLECTIVISM 12 Dec 00 HY says he “had written a piece for The Spectator about how Hague might start to recover. GB obviously thought I had been trying to help Hague… did I believe, he (Brown) asked, in the cyclical shape of politics? That there were individualist phases followed by collectivist phases? This was the rhythm he himself plainly believed in. One such phase lasted from 1979 to 1997”
FN: This might explain Brown’s talk about how recession and Obama’s victory has underlined the need for government – a rather abstract phrase, but one obviously very real to him.