Gordon Brown Prime Minister

If only 10% of this book is true we are dealing with a VERY dangerous Prime Minister who after 10 years of waiting hasn't a clue what to do and is so indicisive he can't even buy his own clothes.

The indications are that he will be a poor PM but we will see.

A book worth reading if you want to be shocked about the billions wasted in the last 10 years ... I was.

Many Inconvenient Truths (1/1 people found this helpful)

Magnificently well researched, authoritative, indexed and referenced. Bower is well known for independent, 'no holds barred' biographies which others call vindictiveness. But it is not his job to be the subjects PR man and you can rely on the fact that he isn't printing spin from the subject. The book is relentlessly negative about Brown because that is what the facts suggest. It is the facts of Brown's failure and manoeuvring over the last ten years that are negative not the writing.

In classic Brown style he "intimated" to be interviewed but never responded to attempts to arrange an interview. This book has the quality of not being a spin exercise and an Orwellian opportunity for Brown to re-write history as with Routledge's effort.

So-called mistakes are nothing of the sort for example George Galloway was born a Catholic (easily searched). But no book is published without small mistakes, Tony Wright was mistakenly called a councillor when he was an MP from 1992.

It is written in a refreshingly anti-political way which means no spin, no couching, no obfuscating and is especially revealing in the use of economic and financial figures.

There are not that many revelations to someone who follows politics closely but for the average voter this book will be dynamite. And to most readers the relentless catalogue of failures and political manoeuvring is mind-boggling and horrific. The last ten years will make sense after reading this book. This book is a must to read before the next election.

An unfair victimisation (1/2 people found this helpful)

This book fails as the serous political biography it so desperately wants to be.
Half way through the book the bottom line is Bower does not like Brown and has decided to write one long personal desiccation of the new prime Minster's character that would be more suited for the pages of Heat magazine and often has the clarity and balance of a tabloid columnist. Brown is often painted in a negative light thought out the many pages a emotionally incompetent controlling unemphatic and weak willed man is sketched out for the reader one wonders if this book were ghost written by one of Browns many political foes.
We learn nothing of Browns philosophies his formative years rushed through in style befitting a Harold Robins novel. The writing style is gossipy and he said she said is the main melody. Brown's reactions to situations seem presumptuous or to be blunt fictionalized to add more paprika to this more then spiced enough mix obscuring it's bland premises.
You can imagine a group of secondary school girls or office stooges gossip about their headmaster or manager in this kind of fashion.
The book is a time pass to Bower's credit it is easy to get into but I'm sure I will finish it none the wiser on who Gordon Brown really is and what he really stand's for.

Meticulously researched, and horrifying (3/3 people found this helpful)

This book isn't brilliantly written, but it's racy, readable and utterly horrifying. Reading this as events continue to unfold, you'll find you'll rarely be surprised by Brown's decisions and indecisions. You'll feel you'll be able to second guess his machinations and those of and his cronies. And when this is all over, you'll look back and you'll know how the British people were misled into tolerating this man for so long.

Gordon Brown Bowerised In Awful, Inaccurate Book: Do Not Buy (9/22 people found this helpful)

What a strange book this is and what an irritating, badly written, badly executed, pointless book it is. Sitting reading it you have check yourself time and time again as Bower gets facts wrong and calls judgements completely inaccurately so such an extent that you can barely trust anything in this book! Did the Tories win in 1992; did Blair become Labour leader in 1994.

It is frankly a shockingly amateurish book and one that has butchered the ingredients of Paul Routledge's Gordon Brown book (another equally problematic book but for very different reasons). More than half the quotes used in the book have no citations, with many taken from Routledge with no acknowledgement.

Bower books are simple tales of power and its misuse. He started with the Nazis, then did Al-Fayed followed by Maxwell, and his black and white tales of misdemeanours and mighty men continues into how he tackles Brown. In the acknowledgments he claims that Brown agreed to be interviewed, only to eventually never return Bower's calls; he takes great pleasure recounting this and says that he revels in challenging `the rich and powerful'. Well Brown is not the former, never has been and never will.

Where can you start about how bad this book is? It has no feel for politics. It is written in the style and content of someone from a foreign land writing about a distant culture they no nothing of, but have speed read a few books on. In Bower's universe such things as public duty, believing in public good, etc, just don't get a mention. And as for ideas, ideology, values, these are alien concepts to Bower.

The mistakes and misunderstandings are laughable in a book that clearly has a Bower industry of researchers and workers behind it. To take just a few idiotic descriptions, John Smith is called a `command control' socialist, Peter Hain a believer in `full socialism', whatever that is. Factual errors abound: Tony Benn and the Militant Tendency are conflated, Donald Dewar is cited as a MP from 1966 (he lost his seat in 1970 and re-entered Parliament in 1978), Tony Wright, a senior MP is called a councillor in 1994 (when he has been a MP since 1983). In one sentence, Bower begins about George Galloway he writes, `Galloway, a Catholic from the West Coast' which is wrong on both counts. He was born in Dundee on the East Coast where he made his name and was brought up a Protestant and has never been a Catholic.

You get the impression that Bower knows nothing about politics, very little about Labour and Labour history and politics, and nothing about Scotland and Scottish politics.

A pointless, awful book and whatever your opinions about Gordon Brown he deserves better!

Gordon Brown Prime Minister

Tom Bower

Reader Reviews:

If only 10% is true (0/0 people found this helpful)

Many Inconvenient Truths (1/1 people found this helpful)

An unfair victimisation (1/2 people found this helpful)

Meticulously researched, and horrifying (3/3 people found this helpful)

Gordon Brown Bowerised In Awful, Inaccurate Book: Do Not Buy (9/22 people found this helpful)

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