Blog posts tagged "James Purnell"

June 5, 2009 11:15 am No Comments

To answer my own initial question: Purnell has broken from the pack. He has done what David Miliband, conceivably Andy Burnham, and maybe John Hutton (of whom more in a moment), might have done and must have been thinking of doing. Purnell has plunged a knife that has been waiting for such an exercise for [...]

9:01 am No Comments

Crumbs! An act of personal political courage – or of scheming personal political advancement? At this point almost impossible to judge. I don’t know James Purnell well. He was once a pivotal bag carrier, speech writer and muse inside Tony Blair’s Downing Street. Hence a Blairite, almost certainly well aware of, and wary of, Gordon [...]

May 21, 2009 6:52 pm No Comments

How convenient, the Whitsun break. Have you ever wondered how many weeks the political classes absent themselves in a year? But the problem today is not absenteeism. In some cases it’s a lack of it.