Gordon Brown

Past, Present and Future
By Francis Beckett

What sort of a man is Gordon Brown? What kind of Prime Minister will he make? Can he stem the growing unpopularity of the Labour Party and win it a fourth term in office? This book, written in the first three months of the year in which Brown becomes Prime Minister, is both a biography and an assessment. Francis Beckett interviewed several of Brown’s closest political collaborators, and had a background briefing from Brown himself. He says the popular image of Brown is entirely wrong: he found an amusing, erudite and charming man who will bring his own style to 10 Downing Street – not Tony Blair’s style, but at least as stylish. He believes that a Brown premiership will mark a fundamental break with the Blair years: a new and different relationship with the USA, a broader foreign policy which is able to look beyond the Middle East, a new and more transparent way of reaching decisions. In a groundbreaking final chapter, he draws on the best evidence available to predict what Gordon Brown will do with his new job.

‘Gordon Brown – Past, Present and Future adds to the list of Beckett’s biographies on Attlee, Macmillan and Blair, and is equally authoritative. The book’s style is relaxed and measured, and there is an underlying respect and affection. Always objective, this is a must-read . . .’ Oliver Rowe, PublicService Magazine For more reviews click here. Francis Beckett’s ten books include acclaimed biographies of three earlier premiers - Clement Attlee, Harold Macmillan and Tony Blair. His Clement Attlee, which has been reissued this year, is now the standard work on this most radical of all Labour’s premiers. Beckett was also the commissioning editor of Haus Publishing’s critically acclaimed series The 20 Prime Ministers of the 20th Century published in October 2006.

Francis has his own website: http://www.francisbeckett.co.uk/

All Substance, No Style? As Gordon Brown moves into 10 Downing Street, Haus Publishing is the first to release a new, up-to-date, thoughtful and intensely personal biography and assessment of the new premier by the distinguished political journalist and contemporary historian Francis Beckett. During the first three months of this year, Beckett talked to Brown’s closest political associates, and had a private meeting in 10 Downing Street with Brown himself. Beckett is better placed than any other writer to assess Brown. He specialised in the same period of history as Brown, the Labour Party in the 1920s. He was a Labour Party press officer in 1983, when Brown entered Parliament. He knew Brown in the early 1970s, when Brown was the student rector of Edinburgh University, and Beckett was press officer at the National Union of Students. This book was researched and written, from start to finish, in the first three months of 2007, and is therefore a completely up-to-date account of Brown’s life and approach to politics. It’s critical, especially of what the author sees as Brown’s ultra-cautiousness, but written with an underlying respect and affection. The result is a very personal assessment which will startle both Brown’s detractors and his admirers. Beckett believes that we are in for a fundamentally different approach from 10 Downing Street, both in style and substance. He thinks the historian in Brown is central to his approach. He writes in his introduction: “He sees the 1920s and 1930s as clearly as anyone can see them who did not live in them. He remembers, and sees the contemporary significance of, what Nye Bevan said to Jennie Lee in the thirties, what the Tories said of Attlee in 1947, how after 1931 Maynard Keynes, Oswald Mosley and David Lloyd George were all, in a sense, trying to achieve the same thing, and why it all still matters. He and I could have argued all morning about Maxton and Macdonald, Churchill and Attlee. We have not had a Prime Minister with that sense of history since Harold Macmillan.”