The new Andrew Rawnsley book is now out (The End of the Party) and my first impression is that it’s as fine a piece of contemporary history as his previous magnum opus, Servants of the People: with some fascinating details of New Labour’s reign.
My favourite (so far) is one which seems to perfectly encapsulate Gordon Brown’s workaholic tendencies, suspicious nature and refusal to delegate:
“A visitor who called on the prime minister’s office in the Commons one day in early June found Brown sitting amidst a sea of copies of ministers’ expenses records which he was wading through alone. ‘He wanted to clear out all ministers with dodgy expenses because he didn’t want to keep them and then find he had to sack them later.’”
Remember: Labour has scores of ministers, and each one had hundreds of pages of documentation covering years of expense claims.
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey
