Gordon Brown

Is Gordon Brown back?

14 September 2024 9:00 am

Last week, there was a surprise visitor to the Treasury: Gordon Brown. The former prime minister and chancellor secretly returned…

How do you say Southwell?

24 February 2024 9:00 am

What’s in a place name?

27 January 2024 9:00 am

Who is Gordon Brown to pose as the voice of fiscal sanity?

12 August 2022 7:13 pm

Gordon Brown is demanding Parliament be recalled for an emergency budget. By October, he says, quoting a study he commissioned…

What shape is the Treasury in now?

18 June 2022 9:00 am

Don’t bring a bottle. Your chances of finding a party in full swing down those chilly corridors are close to…

To save the Union, ignore Gordon Brown

12 January 2022 10:38 pm

As he blasts his way through the remaining support beams of the UK constitution, Gordon Brown is doing more to…

What I really said to Gordon Brown: Field Marshal Lord Guthrie sets the record straight

11 December 2021 9:00 am

A headline in the Mail on Sunday, taken up eagerly by the BBC’s Todayprogramme, claimed recently: ‘The SAS is getting…

Blair & Brown: The New Labour Revolution should be called ‘The Tragedy of Gordon Brown'

9 October 2021 9:00 am

Murder Island features eight real-life ‘ordinary people’ seeking to solve a fictional killing on a fictional Scottish island. What follows…

What does it really mean to feel English?

10 April 2021 9:00 am

Referring to the precarious future of the Union of England and Scotland, the authors of Englishness: The Political Force Transforming…

Borrow-and-spend Boris risks repeating Gordon Brown’s mistakes

15 February 2020 9:00 am

The nature of the Johnson government is still not clear, but has become more so with the announcement this week…

Jonathan Coe. Credit: Getty Images

A novel view of Brexit: Middle England, by Jonathan Coe, reviewed

3 November 2018 9:00 am

Jonathan Coe writes compelling, humane and funny novels, but you sometimes suspect he wants to write more audacious ones. He…

Gordon Brown’s memoirs show he is good at blowing his own trumpet – but nothing else

4 November 2017 9:00 am

Gordon Brown has pitched his memoirs as the honest confessions of a decent man. He failed to win the one…

Women used to forgive men their defects, but the quality of mercy is under strain

4 November 2017 9:00 am

Poor Gordon Brown. He embodies the problem traditionally associated with being male, which is that our sex finds it difficult…

The City needs to make new friends but is becoming pals with Putin a step too far?

4 November 2017 9:00 am

In connection with the receding possibility of a London Stock Exchange listing for Saudi Aramco, I wrote that the City…

Monarch was an airline from an earlier era – but were its owners to blame for its demise?

7 October 2017 9:00 am

Monarch Airlines was the ghost of an earlier age of holiday travel. When I used to see its planes lined…

The first real gaffe of the EU referendum? It’s from Charles Moore

4 June 2016 9:00 am

It was a famous American editor and columnist Michael Kinsley who once defined the political ‘gaffe’ as something that occurs…

Labour must stop feeling repulsed by the idea of Englishness

21 May 2016 9:00 am

My party needs to stop being scared of patriotism

Portrait of the week

22 August 2015 9:00 am

Home Andrew Burnham described calls from Yvette Cooper, a rival candidate for the Labour leadership, for him to withdraw from…

Spectator letters: Housing associations fight back; and more world-wrecking British graduates

1 August 2015 9:00 am

What we’re building Sir: I was surprised and frustrated to read Ross Clark’s piece on housing associations in last week’s…

Next time, David Cameron should pretend to support Bournemouth

2 May 2015 9:00 am

Here’s an election-winning idea for Dave: forget about Aston Villa (or West Ham) and become a full-on Bournemouth fan. They…

Lord Freud: the man who saved the welfare system

28 March 2015 9:00 am

Cameron was right about one thing: not sacking Lord Freud

Channel 4's The Coalition reviewed: heroically free of cynicism

28 March 2015 9:00 am

In a late schedule change, Channel 4’s Coalition was shifted from Thursday to Saturday to make room for Jeremy Paxman…