A contender for the John Rentoul list of questions to which the answer is definitely no.
Simon & Schuster are confirming this morning that they are publishing the new Brown book – on the financial crisis – in November. The book will have an international print, they tell me. However, it doesn’t yet have a name.
The book will steer cleer of personal revelations about New Labour, in contrast to the recent Mandelson tome (it is “not a memoir“, a spokeswoman tells me).
Robert Shrimsley, editor of ft.com, wrote an illuminating Notebook column a few weeks ago previewing the tome. Here is an extract:
Publisher: Looking through the synopsis, I can’t see the chapter on the economic pain felt in Britain during your premiership.
GB: I’ve followed my budget precedent on this. It’s covered in the footnotes to chapter six and in a press release issued separately by the Treasury.
Publisher: I think we really will need some of the personalities from your time in power. What about Damian McBride, he sounds wonderfully evil?
GB: I was never aware of any of his activities and can I just say that I came here to discuss my new treatise on the economic crisis.
Publisher: But do you describe how you felt as you watched this economic tidal wave sweep away all your work?
GB: Chapter four, part seven, deals with why Britain was best-placed to withstand the global slowdown thanks to the policies we put in place over the previous decade.
Interviewer: Are there are good photos?
GB: No, but I have some charts showing the decline in 10-year bond yields across the G8 nations.
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey