31 Aug 2010

Tony Blair’s memoirs on Gordon Brown’s premiership

I hear the final chapter of My Journey by Tony Blair tells us what he would have done if he hadn’t been tipped out of office in 2007.

It effectively criticises Gordon Brown for wasting his short premiership by not keeping up the pace and direction of public sector reform, raising income taxes for top earners and not confronting the deficit strongly enough.

My source, a passionate Blairite, says it shows how Tony Blair, by occupying ground on public sector reform in areas like schooling, would have left the Tories nowhere to go but out to the right of him (making a Lib-Con link-up unthinkable).

Of course many in Labour would question that and say the Blairite policy agenda was why they had to get rid of him.

Anyway, Tony Blair maintained a disciplined public silence during Gordon Brown’s premiership and to some extent lifts it in the book. It’s in the bookshops from opening time tomorrow, the publishers say.

And Channel 4 News has all the candidates for the Labour leadership on the programme tomorrow night.

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