GORDON BROWN – a comment

GORDON BROWN – a comment
I have mixed feelings about Gordon Brown – recognising on one hand his 
immense contribution to British politics, particularly as Chancellor of the 
Exchequer in the global financial crisis of 2007 but never forgiving him for his pretensions to the Prime Minister-ship. 
I have recently been rereading Tom Bowen’s Gordon Brown – Prime Minister 
(2004) which starts with an unflattering picture of Brown attending an Italian 
match in Rome with expensive tickets bought by Geoffrey Robinson the then 
rather shady Attorney General in Tony Bliar’s government and goes on to 
rehearse his biography leading up to but not including his time as Prime Minister 
(which came in 2007)

Beyond the Crash – overcoming the first crisis of globalisation Gordon Brown 
(2010) is his rather incestuous account of the global financial crisis.

Why write a book on the financial crisis? Or perhaps more pertinently, why

write another book on the financial crisis when so many accounts of the

events of 2007–2010 have already appeared that there may be little appetite

for more? My case for writing this account is that I was there. If we do not understand fully the biggest economic shock of our generation, then we are destined to repeat its mistakes. I believe a firsthand account can best illuminate how choices (and mistakes) were made.

My case for writing this now is that the crisis is not yet over. If it is to end with a full recovery, we need to learn quickly the lessons of what went so wrong that the global financial system froze, and we need to come to a firm and shared view regarding what we can do to make things right. So, while some will say this is a book written in (extreme) haste that I will repent of at leisure, it is for me a necessary means of provoking a muchneeded debate about what I believe is the only way to overcome the disastrous economic collapse: coordinated global action. This book is not, therefore, a comprehensive account of the crisis. But it does cover the misjudgments that brought the crisis about and proposes how best they can be overcome. This is my first attempt at a set of recommendations for the next stage of our economic recovery. As I discuss this book’s content with people across the world I will be ready to learn from their knowledge, to review and amend my recommendations, and to update and reconsider my conclusions.

I am neither a finance expert not a trained economist, but fear of making technical mistakes (of which, I’m sure, this book is full) should not silence us altogether when the task before us is so urgent. We are of course summoned to address many great challenges that arise from the global changes that are shaping our twenty-first century lives—combating global terrorism and nuclear proliferation, and in the wider economy itself, curbing the volatility in oil, food, and commodity prices and fighting climate change with the opportunity that I would like to write about later for a transformation in the way our economies consume energy. But in this book, the priority is to address head-on the new and gnawing insecurity that millions now experience in their daily lives. And so my priorities are jobs and justice. This book is a call for the world to achieve together what we now know is possible in the immediate future: to create and save 50 million jobs worldwide and to lift nearly 100 million people out of poverty. We are on an uneven and hazardous journey whose route and destination should not be left to chance, but must be shaped by our common endeavors and by the values we share in common. And for me at least, the oft-quoted phrase I hear spoken and sometimes use myself of “restoring the global economy to full health” cannot be an accurate description of the outcome we seek without its including millions more hard-working families in decent jobs.

This is my first draft, a work in progress. But of this I am certain: the basic thesis—that global problems need global solutions and that there must be an alternative to a decade of low growth and lost jobs—will withstand the arguments about culpability for the crisis and the questions about specific recommendations.

* * *

I, of course, take full responsibility for the contents of this book. Only I am to blame for any mistakes that I have made and that are inevitable in a project of this speed and scope. I did not start to write until the end of May 2010 and completed the work in the fourteen weeks that followed, alongside my work as a Member of Parliament. It would not have been possible to deliver it on deadline without the prior support I had from all those who served with me in government, and I could not even have contemplated it without the amazing and unsurpassable commitment and loyalty of those who are still assisting me today.

The Court Politics of the Blair Presidency is a lecture given in Australia by academic Rod Rhodes in 2005

The lecture covers five topics. First, I document briefly the long-standing claim that post-war Britain witnessed expanding prime ministerial power and the growth of the UK presidency. Second, I turn to the most recent manifestation of this trend - the tales of a Blair Presidency. This story makes three main claims: that there has been a centralisation of coordination, a pluralisation of advice, and the personalisation of elections. Obviously, I draw on the work of academic colleagues, especially where they cite interviews, but I concentrate on the views of practitioners. I rely on the obvious sources of prime ministerial, ministerial and civil servant autobiographies, diaries and memoirs as well as official publications. Many claim there are problems with the evidence of practitioners. As Anthony Mughan (2000: 134) remarks ‘for every “insider” … assertion that prime ministerial government has arrived in Britain, it is possible to find the counter-assertion that cabinet government remains the order of the day’. Such inconsistencies are the puzzle. I compare the several stories and show there is much inconsistency and contradiction. This divergent evidence highlights the paradox between presidential claims and the governance narrative. So, third, I explore the governance paradox - even as people tell tales of a Blair presidency, they recount also stories of British governance that portray it as fragmented and multipolar. In particular, I argue New Labour appears to accept key tenets of the governance narrative. Innovations like joining-up and the reforms at No. 10 recognise the weakness of the centre and fuel claims of the Blair presidency. But New Labour ignores the other half of the governance narrative that stresses interdependence and cooperation, not command and control. So, claims of a Blair presidency founder on policy-making and implementation deficits. Fourth, I argue this paradox reveals the distorting influence that the Westminster Model still exerts on many accounts of British politics. It acts as a smokescreen for the changes in executive politics. Finally, I conclude that Blair is locked into the court politics of Westminster and Whitehall and to complex patterns of domestic and international dependence. The prime minister wins, loses and draws as one might expect given the volatile nature of high politics. Prime ministerial practice is equally varied. And the best way to understand this volatility and variety is through decentered studies of the beliefs and practices of politicians and civil servants

Global Statesman – how Gordon Brown took New Labour to the world David Webber (2017)

Despite its focus upon the hand of Gordon Brown in the design and setting of New Labour’s international development policies, Global Statesman is not a biographical account of Brown’s political career. Given his unparalleled position in modern British politics, it is hardly surprising that a number of books are already in print concerning his life and his politics. There are four main dimensions to the literature that focuses upon the life and political career of Gordon Brown.

• the biographical;

• domestic policies as Chancellor;

• what a Brown premiership might look like;

• his brief tenure as prime minister, focusing specifically upon his management of the global financial crisis, including his own assessment of it, and the personal role that he played in dealing with the ‘first crisis of globalisation’.

Each of these accounts – perhaps with the notable exception of William Keegan’s text, and Brown’s own book – focuses upon the sphere of domestic policymaking; paying little attention to Brown’s concern for global poverty, and the role that he carved out for himself in the institutions of international finance to address this. Despite Brown’s obvious concern for poverty both at home and abroad, international development in these accounts is treated as an ‘extra-curricular’ activity, receiving little more than a chapter or in some instances just a few pages of coverage. This, of course, reflects to a certain degree the relatively minor importance afforded to international development in British politics more generally, and the extent to which other events, particularly during

Brown’s premiership, overtook this area of policy. However, to neglect the issues of global poverty when discussing the personality and politics of one of the most powerful and influential figures in the modern era is to ignore an integral part of Brown’s political economy, and one of the very reasons he pursued a career in politics. Unlike other accounts of Gordon Brown, this book does not draw upon clandestine interviews or off-the-record briefings but rather the very public pronouncements of policy made by Brown and his colleagues. While this might diminish the sensationalism and subterfuge that appears in other accounts, it does enable the book to make a more factual, detailed and balanced assessment of the actual policies designed and implemented by Brown during his time as shadow Chancellor, Chancellor and finally prime minister.

In the preparation of this manuscript, thousands of speeches and statements made by senior New Labour offi cials either in Parliament itself or at other events elsewhere in Britain and across the world were read or listened to. Of all of these speeches, it was Brown who, by some distance, delivered the majority. Not only does this reveal the seriousness that he, more than any other senior New Labour figure, afforded matters concerning poverty and development, it also demonstrates just how infl uential Brown was in designing and implementing this and other areas of government policy. These statements were subsequently scrutinised for both context and content before being woven together to form a narrative of development that could be examined in the light of Brown’s own vision of development. It is this book that, based upon this discourse analysis, provides the critical assessment of the political economy of Brown’s vision to deliver a more socially and economically just world. In pursuing this line of inquiry, this book proceeds by mapping out the strategic terrain that Gordon Brown and New Labour were faced with during the final stages of the party’s modernisation and ascent towards government.

For Gordon Brown, his commitment to addressing global poverty was borne out of a childhood spent growing up in his father’s manse in Kirkcaldy and driven by a deep compassion for the most vulnerable in society. Brown’s childhood experiences as a Presbyterian ‘son of the manse’ imprinted upon him the virtues of Christian socialism and instilled in the future Chancellor, prime minister and leader of the Labour Party a burning desire for social justice.

Political Memoirs Andrew Gamble (1994) demonstrates, somewhat caustically, the dangers of that brand of memoir.

The Deal is an excellent BBC series aired in 2002 with 
David Morrisey and Michael Sheen which demonstrates the power 
of their friendship

Gordon Brown – power with purpose James Macintyre (2026)

“My Scotland, Our Britain” traces the origins of modern social provision to

Scotland’s demands for the abolition of the Scottish Poor Law and its

replacement by a British welfare state. Contrary to conventional wisdom,

Brown argues that the concept of ‘sharing’ across the UK was not an

English imposition but in fact a Scottish invention. Brown’s book provided

the basis for his many speeches in those months following the

announcement of the referendum, when Brown spoke at universities and in

schools, at pensioner forums, to a range of faith and other groups, including

Carmelite nuns and the Royal British Legion, across towns and villages the

length of Scotland.

Yet he sensed that the message was not getting through, because it was

overshadowed by a campaign that was effectively led by the Tory

government which, Brown felt, was inadvertently playing into the hands of

the nationalists who were pitching the argument as England against

Scotland. ‘What was getting through, loud and clear, was that the people of

Scotland wanted change. And here was the irony: each pro-union party had

a strong devolution programme, with detailed proposals about additional

powers for the Scottish Parliament over taxation, employment, social policy

and welfare. The problem was that nobody had heard about the proposals or

had any idea that if they voted No, new powers would be delivered.’

The cross-party, unionist Better Together campaign was often chaotic,

which helps explain the dramatic narrowing of the polls, from a year before

the vote, when the ‘No’ side was twenty points ahead, to the two sides being

broadly neck and neck as the poll approached. Speeches were frequently

composed at the last minute, the Liberal Democrats were accused of not

pulling their weight and the press operation was weak, while the ‘Yes’

campaign was three times as active on social media compared to the ‘No’

team. Over the summer of 2014, however, the articulate shadow foreign

secretary Douglas Alexander was called in to boost the unionist cause. The

safe pair of hands that was Alistair Darling fronted the Better Together

campaign, and helped to bring in funds – including from the revered authors

J. K. Rowling, an Edinburgh neighbour of Darling, and C. J. Sansom –

while the then political operator and now MP Blair McDougall helped to

run it. Alexander scripted interviews and worked on general messaging and

advertising designed to reach out to Scots still wavering over their

momentous decision.

But Gordon Brown continues to practice his "moral leadership" as is indicated in 
his latest article in The Guardian 

ON SOCIALISM

The Making of British Socialism Mark Bevir (2011)

Chapter 1 Introduction: Socialism and History 1

Chapter 2 The Victorian Context 22

Part One: The Marxists 43

Chapter 3 Ernest Belfort Bax 45

Chapter 4 Henry Mayers Hyndman 65

Chapter 5 William Morris 85

Chapter 6 The Social Democratic Federation 106

Part Two: The Fabians 129

Chapter 7 Theories of Rent 131

Chapter 8 George Bernard Shaw 152

Chapter 9 Sidney Webb 173

Chapter 10 Permeation and Independent Labor 195

Part Three: The Ethical Socialists 215

Chapter 11 Welfarism, Socialism, and Religion 217

Chapter 12 American Romanticism and British Socialism 235

Chapter 13 Ethical Anarchism 256

Chapter 14 The Labour Church Movement 278

Conclusion

Socialism, Labor, and the State 298

This book has been a long time in the making. I first began working on the history of British socialism in the late 1980s. Back then, Margaret Thatcher’s governments loomed large over my political world. Critics portrayed socialism as a discredited statist ideology. Even socialists sometimes implied that it was an outdated class-based ideology. Yet, I wanted to recapture the diversity of socialism and thereby find inspiration for a radical democratic and transformative politics that rejected market individualism for egalitarian fellowship. I thought British socialists needed a new narrative with which to respond to neoliberalism. One reason this book has been so long in the making is that in the 1990s the Labour Party provided just such a narrative. New Labour presented itself as adhering to historic socialist “ends” while adopting new “means.” The old socialist “means” had allegedly been made irrelevant by the rise of new times. The advancement of socialism now supposedly required supply-side economics, capacity building, and networks and partnerships delivering services. Although I was impressed by the energy and vigor of the New Labour project, its narrative and politics were not what I had had in mind. I got distracted from the history of British socialism by the desire to come to terms with its present.

The reader will find that this book still echoes my early aim of providing a more diverse portrait of socialism. Socialism has never been just about class-based politics and state intervention. It has never been the caricature depicted by Mrs. Thatcher; nor has it been the preserve of the Labour Party and its leaders. On the contrary, British socialism has always included radical democratic, pluralist, and utopian strands. Many socialists have promoted nongovernmental visions of personal and social transformation. They have envisaged more simple and cooperative ways of life.

I hope this book will help to correct widespread misconceptions about the history and nature of socialism. I also hope that it will contribute, even if only ever-so slightly, to attempts to forge more fulfilling ways of living with one another and the natural world of which we are part.

Why You Should be a Socialist Nathan Robinson (2019)

In Part I, we will discuss how examining the world honestly and humanely produces a “socialistic instinct,” one that is frustrated by unnecessary injustices and unsatisfied with popular rationalizations of those injustices. We’ll use that instinct to examine the world and try to understand precisely what features of contemporary political and economic systems are so revolting to the left sensibility. We’ll also clear away some of the tempting myths advanced by defenders of free markets and social hierarchies.

Next, in Part II, I will talk about how that basic moral instinct can help us formulate a particular set of socialist principles—valuing solidarity, equality, and freedom. Then I will look at the long and honorable tradition of socialist thinking, paying particular attention to libertarian socialism and the great socialists of the United States. After that, I’ll talk explicitly about the kind of vision and ambition that these principles produce, laying out some of the utopian ideals that are worth thinking about. Then, we’ll get into some of the frustrating terminological discussions about socialism, democratic socialism, libertarian socialism, social democracy, liberalism, etcetera. (We will try to get this sorted out as quickly as possible, so that everyone can go home early.) Then, we’ll see how conventional political ideas failed, and why the world needs a socialist political response. I’ll explain what a strong left agenda would look like and give some suggestions for strategies to move it forward.

In Part III, I will deal with alternatives and criticisms. I’ll explain why conservatism is cruel and liberalism is oblivious. I’ll respond to common critiques of the left, examining why they all fail and everyone should reject them. I will conclude with a rousing call to arms for the new generation of democratic socialists who will make life better for billions of people around the world.

The Richer, the Poorer – how New Labour enriched the few and failed the poor 
Stewart Lansley (2021)

This book examines the multiple and changing mechanisms that link

wealth and poverty. These links have shifted in line with the model of capitalism in place, the strength of democratic structures and societal pressure, the restraints imposed on the owners of capital and the lengths to which business and financial elites have been prepared to go to preserve their wealth, power and privileges. Through much of the nineteenth century, wealth was synonymous with political power. Britain was a near- plutocracy, a society run by and mostly for the richest sections of society who were able to firewall their wealth and status. Some concessions on working conditions and welfare were granted, if only because of fear of the consequences of inaction. The dominant philosophy – a belief in individual liberty, free markets and limited democracy – showed little concern with the lot of the governed. Ricardo’s distribution question was to be settled by the outcome of the play of market forces. The question of help for the losers from economic change was considered by mainstream thinking to be a matter of conscience and of private benevolence.

The great personal wealth boom of the nineteenth century was built largely off the back of a cheap and weakly organised labour force. Unrestrained industrial capitalism, eventually tempered by the rise of trade unions, new pressure groups and investment in social infrastructure, did deliver improvements in average living standards, but this was an uneven path. Social progress for most was slow and hard fought, and lagged behind the economic gains enjoyed by the financial, landowning and professional classes. 

In Praise of Social Democracy Political Quarterly Roy Hattersley (2012)

Both prominent Bevanites (most notably Dick Crossman) and leading Bennites (including Benn himself) argued that it was better to wait in opposition for the inevitable crisis of capitalism at which point socialism would triumph than to abandon core principles in a desperate attempt to accommodate the average voter in a more affluent society.

A by-product of that view is the fraudulent claim by left-wing Labour that they alone are the keepers of the party’s soul.

Ironically, New Labour reflected the mirror image of that view. Its adherents also argue that a choice has to be made between principle and power and that, since Opposition equates to impotence, it is necessary to compromise in order to win office. One of New Labour’s defining characteristics was the willingness to jettison ‘unelectable’ principles and policies in order to get into power. This was the clear assumption after Blair became the Labour Leader in 1994, and the position was given considerable force by the party suffering the indignity of being out of power for so long. Once in government, the Labour party continued to act in a way which suggested that there was no justification in seeking to move decisively leftwards in the face of immovable public opinion, globalisation and a right-wing media—that there was no alternative to a very cautious centre/centre left policy stance. The general election defeat of 1992 was offered as evidence that the electorate would never consider voting in sufficient numbers for an overtly social democratic policy platform and some even became critical of John Smith’s alleged belief that ‘one more push’ would see the Labour party returned to office at the next general election. Once in power, New Labour redistributed by stealth while claiming not to be concerned about the proliferation of the ‘filthy rich’ and—mistaking or being unaware of Michael Young’s analysis—thought that meritocracy was a condition devoutly to be wished. The moral was clear. A party led by a Prime Minister who, on television, could not bring himself even to regret the widening gap between rich and poor, would never dare to mount a real attack on poverty.

In the Labour party the fatalism of left and right coincide. The conflict between power and principle is deemed to be fundamental. The party cannot have both. Labour could either pursue power or defend its ideological purity. And New Labour believed, or claimed to believe, that the victory of 1997 confirmed that necessity of accepting the abandonment of principles which it called ‘reality’. Anyone who has read Robert Worcester’s Explaining Labour’s Landslide realises that the Tory defeat was inevitable in 1997.

The distinctive feature of Ed Miliband’s leadership campaign, and ultimately the reason why he was elected, was his clear belief that power and principle could go together. His message was that Labour should have confidence in its ideology and that the promotion of social democratic aims and values is essential to securing victory. New Labour lost because it was not ideological enough. It was never intellectually confident and never, while in office, seriously sought to reshape public opinion. Before 2007 many of Gordon Brown’s supporters believed that the Labour government would be more radical once he became Leader. Apart from a short-lived honeymoon period in the first few months of his premiership, the Labour party appeared to lack any sense of ideological direction for most of his time in power. The likelihood is that he possessed one of the attributes that led to Miliband’s victory in Labour’s leadership election. He believed, but he did not dare. Ed Miliband laid claim to be part of a different tradition within the Labour party: the certainty that the pursuit of power and the commitment to social democratic ideals go together. Arguably such a stance was the one held by Hugh Gaitskell as Leader of the Labour party between 1955 and 1963, where he sought to respond to changing economic and social conditions of the day while, at the same time, setting out a clear ideological vision centred on a commitment to equality.

Tony Crosland became the intellectual exponent of that view. He was said to be on the ‘right’ of the Labour party because he supported the Atlantic Alliance, endorsed (with limited enthusiasm) what was then the Common Market and refused to believe that socialism was synonymous public ownership. But, not only was he the most consistent advocate of greater equality in Labour’s history, he was one of the fiercest critics of the Wilson government of 1964–70 for its lack of radicalism in its economic policy and the most effective critic of the imposition of austerity in response to the ‘IMF Crisis’ of 1976. Indeed, he refused to be associated with the ‘right’ of the party in the 1970s, believing that they were far too willing to compromise, and instead perceiving himself to be a ‘centrist’ in terms of Labour’s ideological spectrum.

Moreover, we claim that only the state can do certain things fairly. In this we mean that the pursuit of equality is only possible with a central state committed to the establishment of a national minimum welfare standard. In some cases there may actually be more welfare as a result of devolution and decentralisation. However, it is also conceivable that some wealthier communities once empowered to provide local services would seek to reduce welfare provision and standards in their area thus creating more inequality. Only a central state committed to equality could intervene to avoid such inequalities occurring, but in making such interventions the autonomy of local communities is undermined. The priority attached to equality is justified since it is one consequence of having greater equality that individuals can then participate as active citizens. It is not just ‘community’ which is important to social democrats, but the type of community.

There are several recent examples of economic and welfare policy where there has been evidence of too little state intervention rather than too much. The challenge of an increasingly elderly population is likely to require more state intervention not less. Moreover, despite the problems of the single currency, the domestic economies of France and Germany have been better able to respond to the challenge of the banking crisis as their governments have ensured that they have a more secure manufacturing base than rival economies like that of Britain which were over-reliant on banking and so were particularly exposed to the collapse of financial services.

Support for the minimal state is, in part, a product of the belief that the unrestricted market is invariably the best way to guarantee efficiency and encourage growth. We agree that a market—in much of the economy—is an essential feature of a free and prosperous society. But evidence confirms that the market is not the best way to improve the performance, or allocate resources within, the public services and those privatised industries which were once, in the words of the 1950s’ legislation, ‘managed on behalf of the people’. New Labour promoted the internal market in the health service to the undoubted detriment of the provision for some patients.

The Potters Bar train crash resulted from the neglect of railway maintenance—a typical example of unjustifiable market cost cutting. Social democrats believe the market is often, but not always, the best way to regulate the economy. The creation of a strong and just society relies on an active central state and in current conditions there would be popular support for more economic intervention based on clear social democratic principles. When a child dies of neglect or parent brutality, cattle are threatened by the outbreak of foot and mouth disease, rivers flood or unemployment dramatically rises, the cry goes up for the state to do more.

B IS FOR BURNHAM

It has been remiss of me not to have recognised the incoming of a new Prime Minister – with this article covering Andy Burnham’s first week 

Because Starmer had nothing to say, he had no voice to say it in. We should have 
known. In 2021 he wrote a 12,000-word essay to define himself and his politics. 
It was remarkable for its emptiness. Opportunities would be seized, potential fulfilled, 
power harnessed and productivity unlocked. Sentences had verbs, but it wasn’t 
always clear what those verbs related to — under a Labour government, “community, 
wellbeing, security and opportunity” were to be “fleshed out”, which is nice, but it 
didn’t mean anything in opposition and was no guide to government. 
A Judgement on Keir Starmer by Will Davies
Many of the things that now seem exciting and impressive about Burnham as 
an individual leader are things that were taken for granted about Tony Blair and 
even David Cameron: having a plan that a leader appears to believe in, is willing to 
argue for, will take flack for (Burnham is still something of an unknown quantity here), 
and which others can then position themselves in relation to, either as opponents or 
supporters. Quite how radical Burnham will end up being remains to be seen, but 
some of the appearance of political radicalism is merely the shock of politics being 
done purposefully and enthusiastically, signalling how dysfunctional British politics 
had become in the decade following the Brexit referendum. 

Starmer’s absence could be felt and witnessed across three different aspects of 
political leadership: appetite, destination, ideology. It wasn’t clear why he wanted 
to be Prime Minister (appetite), it wasn’t clear what he wanted to do with power 
(destination) and it wasn’t clear why or with what justification he wanted to get there 
(ideology). It was this triple vacuum that made him such a bewildering figure, 
psychologically as much as politically. There weren’t even any significant stories of 
psychological frailty, sensitivity, rage or rupture, that usually leak out from centres 
of political power, simply because politicians are such unusual psychological 
specimens. It felt like there was no there there.
Burnham’s first 100 days 

Today – the ‘first 100 days’ is acknowledgement that first impressions count. In the case of Andy Burnham – seventh prime minister in 10 years and the Labour Party deeply unpopular – this is the chance, maybe the last chance, to turn around the government’s fortunes. There is, of course, no magic to 100 days as opposed to 90 or 110, but seeing each term (to use the unit of time I’m familiar with as a former teacher) as a key strategic period is a useful way to govern. Thinking in 100 day or three-month chunks forces the government to think beyond getting through the week.

Of course, all of these three-month periods should be part of an overarching strategy that Burnham puts together with a 2/3 year horizon, working back from where he wants to be at the next election. This in turn will need to fit into the 10-year plan that he has promised. I used to write these strategies in Number 10. They require pulling together several inputs from different parts of the building: the policy announcements, the big events, a speech programme – all in pursuit of the key strategic objectives for the period. Done well, the plan gives purpose and direction to Number 10 and the government. Rather than the prime minister’s diary being filled with activities from those who shout the loudest, this is a strategic way of ensuring he spends his time (his most precious commodity) in the most effective way possible. What follows is what a three-month plan could look like; a template for the kind of short document that ultimately needs to be interrogated and then signed off by the prime minister.

How to compile a 100 day/three-month strategic plan

Objectives

This is the key starting point. What does the prime minister want to have achieved in the first 100 days and how will he measure success? I have given some examples below of what the objectives might look like (ideally there would be 3 to 5 - I’ve done a menu of 6) and the kinds of steps that might exemplify them.

(i)To establish that Burnham is an insurgent and his government represents a ‘circuit breaker’ e.g
a. Appoint a Cabinet with the biggest reformers in the key positions and an instruction to work at pace.
b. Structural changes – reforming the centre of government plus creating task forces/mission teams to deliver the key priorities. (Instead of assuming that new Ministers and one more heave from departments will get there)
c. Make No10 North work as a new centre of power outside of Westminster
d. Signal new policy directions e.g on education

(ii)To bring to life his big idea about devolution and ‘rewiring the state’
Burnham’s big idea is to hand power back to the people and tackle an overly-centralised state. This needs to be worked into a narrative that lands with the public, accompanied by a set of speeches, activities and policies that bring it alive e.g.
a. A new devolution settlement with new powers and resources to communities
b. A massive reduction in Whitehall numbers and functions.
c. No 10 North opened and staffed and Burnham working there each week

(iii)To demonstrate a willingness to take tough decisions
If the perceived weakness is that Burnham is not willing to take tough decisions, he can establish the reverse in the first few months. And there will be many opportunities to do so e.g.
a. The zeal with which he gets stuck into public service and welfare reform
b. The tough choices in the first budget
c. the message of trade-offs to the faithful at party conference

(iv)To connect with the electorate and get them to take a second look at Labour e.g.
a. Design a new communications strategy
b. Use Labour Party conference for a reset with the public
c. Use No10 North as a platform for keeping in constant touch with the public.

(v) To show economic credibility and a plan for a new economy
e.g.
a. Deliver a successful first Budget giving confidence there is a credible economic
plan for stability and growth in every postcode
b. Unleash the power of business – particularly small and medium sized businesses - to create wealth
c. Take the first steps to making the tax system fairer
d. Take tough decisions on spending eg welfare spending

(vi) To show he is sure-footed on the international stage e.g.
a. First meeting with Trump
b. First meeting with European leaders
c. First visit to Ukraine
d. First armed forces visit

Narrative

The narrative – or washing line – is what all (or most) announcements should hang off. The narrative has to be big and go way beyond – ‘this is a cost of living government’. It needs to capture three things:
1. The big argument about an overly-centralised state and an unequal society requiring a new politics and a new economy - connected to the future and personal aspiration
2. A story about Britain’s place in the world – how it gets its reputation back - after the last 10 years of instability
3. A personal story about Burnham and his values and purpose
The narrative should be turned into a message note that gives Cabinet Ministers the context for all their communications and shows everyone pulling in the same direction.

Speech programme

Speeches still matter. They are where arguments are honed and stakeholders and the public get a sense of clarity and direction. Continuous explanation (long form and short form) is essential for a government to be effective in the attention economy. For a new prime minister this is particularly important. e.g. He should make a series of big reforming speeches in the first few months that might include:
a. How I will rewire the state
b. Why we need to rethink education providing parity of esteem between academic and vocational.
c. How I will give young people their future back – building on Neet review etc
d. Why we need to change our economic model to ensure living standards rise
e. The part you can play in renewing Britain
f. My vision of Britain in the world

Big moments

There will be key moments during the first 100 days that need to be planned for. Some are already fixed: the leaders’ speech at Labour Party Conference, the first PMQs. Others are still to be scheduled (I have guessed when they might be in the table below). Some, not yet scheduled, are likely to happen in the next few months – for example, the first meeting with Trump, and the first major engagement with EU leaders.

The key is to build a strategy around them.

Building Burnham’s profile

Burnham needs to define himself as prime minister before opponents do it for him. The public do not know Burnham well. While he is loved in Manchester, the rest of the country needs to get to know him. Some of this will come in his good use of social media and his successful narration of his premiership. But there needs to be a strategic view too of how he is seen to be making the shift from Mayor to Prime Minister. The sort of questions that need answering are:
a. How does he want to tell his own personal story - his family, his political journey, his hopes and fears, his interests and passions?
b. What media vehicles best suit his new style of politics?
c. How does he best engage with opponents? How does he demonstrate his aim of greater cross-party working? How should he handle PMQs?
d. How does he remain an insurgent and not become just another incumbent? Should he have weekly/fortnightly town hall meetings? How should he use No 10 North as an antidote to Westminster business as usual? One sign of success would be that the political lobby has to create its own ‘Lobby North’ to reflect the amount of activity going on outside of London.

Designing a ‘playlist’ of big issues and arguments that need to be fought for each day.

What are the four or five big things that the government is fighting for on a daily/weekly basis? This is where the idea of a story factory comes in. Each of these needs a constant stream of media stories to win the argument and show progress. How does the prime minister’s diary reflect these priorities? E.g.
a. Building more social housing
b. Growth in every postcode
c. Fairer utility bills
d. Parity of esteem in education between academic and technical
e. Reform of social care

One of the many reasons why the British government has been so unstable in recent years has been the lack of strategy and strategic capacity in Number 10. Short-term tactics have dominated over long-term strategy. Now is the time to reassert the importance of having clear objectives for each three-month period and relentlessly pursuing them. That is a good way of showing ‘grip’ and providing the clarity and purpose Britain so desperately needs.

Head North Any Burnham and Steve Rotherham (2024)

Bella Caledonia is an important Scottish site and this is what one of its editors, Mike Small, had to say about Burnham
 
Burnham’s first task to establish that he is not simply a replacement for Starmer, is to set out his plan for Britain, and much of his thinking stems from Head North. Some of the key ideas are:

1. A Written Constitution

2. A Basic Law

3. Reform of the Voting System

4. Removal of the Whip

5. A Senate of the Nations and Regions

6. Full Devolution

7. Two Equal Paths in Education

8. A Grenfell Law

9. A Hillsborough Law

10. Net Zero to Reindustrialise the North

The platform emerges from the network called Mainstream, the Compass-founded 
campaign group that provided policy work for Burnham to start to build a leadership 
campaign. The Burnham movement sees itself as centre-left, and is motivated by a drive for progressive social policy, democratic reform and the need to provide a credible response to the rise of the far-right. The group were appalled by the regressive social policy of the Starmer government, the internal chaos and factionalism and the astonishing mismanagement of the Peter Mandelson appointment. They aim to overcome both the sense of internal chaos within Labour and the general feeling of Britain being moribund and in perpetual decline.
It remains to be seen if Burnham will implement any or all of his ideas, or be thwarted 
by the powers that be. But even as a nascent project it represents a political threat to 
the SNP as it aims to reform the UK both constitutionally and economically. 
Let’s try and unpack some of their ideas.
At the centre of Burnham’s political project is a form of constitutional reform including 
creating a written constitution, reform of the voting system, creating a Senate of the 
Nations and Regions, and something called ‘Full Devolution’. These proposals could 
be transformative, but they do land in an uncomfortable way. What is the democratic 
forum in which these ideas have been developed? It feels like, and this is true of the 
Burham project as a whole, as ‘democracy from above’. And the whole constitutional 
reform project also sits uncomfortably with the deeper constitutional crisis that still 
haunts Britain.
Dr Ryan Swift, writing for the IPPR has noted (On Home Ground) : “Devolution must 
become the organising principle of a rewired, forward-looking UK – one that drives 
economic growth and reduces regional inequalities, renews democracy and rebuilds 
political trust from the bottom up, and becomes firmly established within the governance 
of the country.” But while this feels radical it doesn’t really get to grips with the deeper 
national questions at play here. Instead, it tries to just bypass them.
Swift again: “The conversation on regional devolution shouldn’t stop at England’s 
borders. Greater regional devolution within Scotland and Wales for cities like Glasgow, 
Edinburgh and Cardiff could complement national devolution by strengthening cities 
and local economies while reducing the concentration of power within the devolved 
governments themselves. A genuinely multi-level UK should recognise that 
decentralisation is valuable at every level of government.”

The F Bomb, again
It feels like an agenda for breathing some democracy into English local government. 
But that’s not really the same as genuine constitutional reform. It’s noted, too, that the 
language has shifted from ‘abolish the House of Lords’ to ‘reform the upper chamber’. 
Burnham’s revelation that Britain has power and wealth concentrated in London may 
be amazeballs to the political class but it’s not exactly news to Scots. 
Essentially, this is bits of Gordon Brown’s blueprint document. That’s certainly true of 
the Council of Nations and Regions shtick.

As John Denham wrote in 2024: “Today Keir Starmer will chair the first meeting of the
Council of Nations and Regions (CNR). It’s an innovation 
with an important message about Labour working to 
deliver across the UK.  But how much difference will it 
make to the way the United Kingdom and its nations are run? The Council has its origins in Gordon Brown’s report on the future of the UK which  recommended ‘a new and powerful institution to drive co-operation between all its governments – a Council of the Nations and Regions.’ I was critical of Brown for not being radical enough but I also warned that  ‘Labour in government is usually less radical than in opposition’. That’s certainly the case with the new Council.” He goes on: “Brown wanted the Council of Nations and Regions based in statute, with an independent secretariat. It was to be part of a series of constitutional changes, including stronger legal protection for the devolved parliaments, the replacement of the Lords with a union-wide second chamber, a new Council of England to represent English mayors and local government, and a new body to bring together the First Ministers with the UK Prime Minister.”
“Today’s Council was reportedly set up without even informing the Scottish government and will, it seems, be run out of Whitehall’s Cabinet Office by the recently demoted Sue Gray.  While Brown’s Lords reform did raise some serious difficulties, the King’s Speech contained no proposals to give the CNR legal status and the rest of Brown’s proposals have, for now at least, disappeared.”
I didn’t quite know what was meant by ‘Removal of the whip’. The Guardian journalist 
Andrew Sparrow explained: “In the book they suggest getting rid of the whipping system 
altogether. But now Burnham is proposing whipping-lite – in particular, not suspending 
people who vote against govt whip.”
There’s a strong element of the zeitgeisty ‘consensus’ speak that is all the rage among 
wonks and the chattering class.
In 2024 Burnham made a speech advocating that a Grenfell Law should be introduced to 
enshrine the right for decent housing for every citizen in Britain. He said: “We need a new 
housing-first strategy, because you can’t have anything without a good home. It should 
be a human right for everyone to have a decent, secure home and that’s what we should 
be working towards.” 
 real threat to the arguments for Scottish independence because it posits the idea, again, that Britain is reformable. But the constitutional reforms are so wracked with inconsistencies and contradictions

Ask Andy Anything
Burnham has made great play of Mamdani-like sessions in which you could Ask Andy 
Anything. He did this in Cardiff city-centre the other day. It’s a good look.  One question 
would be: “If this is a voluntary Union, what is the democratic way to leave it?” But, if the 
answer is there isn’t one (dear readers – that is the answer)  then all of the policy 
proposals about Mayors and constitutions seem an odd distraction.
But my notes on the inadequacy of Burnham’s constitutional programme are complemented 
by other observations about the absence of power analysis in Labour’s outlook. European 
Powell points out that: “Andy Burnham is days away from becoming Prime Minister. 
His incoming chief of staff is James Purnell, CEO of Flint Global, a corporate lobbying firm 
whose clients include Amazon, Uber, BP, Airbnb, Apple and Thames Water, the utility 
Burnham says should be nationalised. In December 2025, Flint was acquired by private 
equity firm Cinven for £190 million. The firm at the centre of a Burnham government is not 
merely connected to corporate capital. It is owned by it.” “While at Flint, Purnell told 
corporate clients to expect deregulation, no tax rises, and spending cuts. That is the stated 
position of the man who will occupy the most powerful unelected role in the British government
.” This political/apolitical trope is played out in an interview Andy Burnham has with Gary 
Lineker in which he said he didn’t want to “create new divisions” when asked if he would 
set up a wealth tax: 

Burnham does not have Starmer’s fatal flaw, of an almost complete lack of any policy ambition whatsoever. However he is divorced from any political base and guilty, like his predecessor, of constant flip-flops.
As Grace Blakeley points out (The Labour Machine always wins):
“Burnham has managed to ingratiate himself with what remains of the Labour left over the last
 few years, thanks in part to some genuinely impressive achievements as Mayor of Greater 
Manchester. But a cursory look at Burnham’s public statements during his recent campaign 
reveals a politician just as slippery and opportunistic as Starmer.”
“As Harriet Williamson shows in this excellent video for Novara media, Burnham has made 
multiple, contradictory promises to different factions within the Labour Party. He says he’s 
going to invest in public services, while also sticking to Rachel Reeves’ nonsensical fiscal 
rules. He has previously articulated liberal attitudes towards migration, but recently 
supported Shabana Mahmood’s draconian immigration reforms. He’s criticised the Israeli 
government, but refused to call out Israel’s genocide.” “This opportunism is, of course, what 
makes Burnham palatable to the Labour machine. To be sure, he is not their preferred 
candidate. They would prefer someone like Wes Streeting, who has clearly demonstrated his 
obedience by taking vast donations from private healthcare lobbyists only to advocate 
ceaselessly for greater private involvement in the NHS. Burnham hasn’t been quite so 
grasping. But he has flip-flopped enough times for the Labour machine’s apparatchiks to 
accept he is no threat to their project.” Burnham’s project is over-sold because the British 
political class thinks it’s radical to point out that Britain has a concentration of wealth and 
power in London. Manchesterism is good but limited as explored by Mike Danson here 
On No 10 North and the Limits of Manchesterism – Bella Caledonia and by Laurie 
MacFarlane here: Scotland has already tried ‘Manchesterism’. It won’t solve Britain’s 
economic crisis alone,
The post-Starmer era is upon us, but Burnham is still wedded to centrist ideas of 
ameliorative change that remain within the range of acceptable political discourse but are 
woefully inadequate for the state we’re in

X

ThisThis podcast covers the main points

And some other ideas from Will Davies in A Legitimacy Trap   

When people do not see the state solving problems, faith that politics can improve their lives fades. This erosion is experienced first at the level of everyday life: in those potholes, waiting lists, and polluted rivers. Small-scale local problems can accumulate into national discontent. The damage is compounded when there appear to be no actors with the authority or ability to fix them. Market-conforming, low-visibility interventions – from planning reform to “nudge” policies – have been both too modest for the scale of the problems, and they have failed to produce a clear demonstration of state effectiveness. Furthermore, serious high-profile failures – such as the infected blood scandal – do not seem to result in adequate learning on the part of system designers. Without visible improvements in public services, the state will struggle to rebuild trust; yet repeated failures to improve them have simultaneously eroded support for the very measures (most notably higher taxation) required to do so. 

Human Landscapes of my country Nazim Hismet (2001) 

The Productive State – a framework for Manchesterism Mark Williams (2026)

EIGHT MORE

Only 38,000 clicks so far this month – compared with some 450.000 last month. That’s less than one tenth of last months’. So far, so bad! Hopefully I’ll be able to reach 45,000 by the end of the month?

An Honest Day Mark McVitie (2026) An unusual pamphlet (with 100 odd pages) 
which argues that

Britain has built an economy where holding position or owning things pays better than putting in an honest day’s work. Holding scarce assets, occupying protected market positions, navigating process, gaming broken systems and capturing profit from state‐created scarcity have become safer routes to reward than working, building, investing, teaching, caring, manufacturing or taking productive risk.

Conclusion

Britain does not lack people willing to work, build, care, teach, invent, manufacture, serve, take risks or do the right thing. It lacks a settlement that rewards them.

For too long, the country has asked people to keep their side of the bargain while quietly withdrawing the rest. Work no longer reliably buys a good life; the state taxes heavily but cannot deliver visibly; markets in essentials reward scarcity; and the institutions of common life have thinned. The public knows the rules are rigged, and mainstream politics has too often offered either denial, compensation or management.

Nostalgia will not do. The post‐war settlement cannot be restore. The Thatcher settlement cannot be unleashed again. The New Labour settlement cannot be revived by wishing the world of the 2000s back into existence.

Austerity has left no hidden reserve of state capacity to draw on. The country needs a new and actively forged settlement. This begins by naming the moral line: work and initiative against extraction. It then names the institutional truth: extraction persists because the state has lost capability. The governing task then being to rebuild a democratic state able to choose, build, enforce and be held accountable, so that the conditions of productive life in Great Britain are restored.

This is a pro‐market argument: competition where competition is possible, hard obligations where competition is not, and public authority willing to confront rent‐seeking, capture and monopoly position. It is also a pro‐state argument, but for a state that does fewer things than the current state pretends to do and does the things only it can do seriously.

It is a demand for multiple economic engines, not an attack on London; and it is a demand that success follow from action, contribution and risk rather than position, scarcity and gaming. The fight will be hard because the winners from the present settlement are organised. Landholders, incumbents, process industries, extractive owners, regulatory moats, consultancy dependency, parts of the political‐ administrative class and the populists who thrive on decline will resist. That resistance is not a reason to retreat. It is proof that the line has been drawn in the right place.

The people who sustain Britain have waited too long for politics to take their side in more than language. They do not need another account of how difficult everything is. They need a government willing to say who the country is for, what must be confronted, and what must be built.

An honest day's work should once again lead to security, agency and dignity. That is the promise. The machinery of the old settlement will not deliver it. This one, if we have the courage to deliver it and the will to believe in it, will.

Europe 2031 (2026) a short, interesting pamphlet (only 68 pages) which argues 
that we in Europe are indeed facing revolutionary change with Artificial Intelligence 
but does so using a highly personalised approach. Ideal for the cynical me!

America’s AI Action Plan (2025) an even shorter (just 28 pages) document

Invitation to a Banquet – the story of Chinese Food Fuschia Dunlop (2020)

Shaped by the State – toward a new poitical history of the 20th century 
ed B Cebul et al (2019) 

The chapters in part 1, “Building Leviathan,” point to the emergence of the New Deal state and its discontents as they were constructed and reconstructed through the crises of depression and war. The essays suggest that as state builders confronted structural realities and limitations inherited from earlier eras as well as broader contemporary social and structural realities, the state they built entrenched and developed certain governing logics—accommodation with Jim Crow, techniques of surveillance, public-private partnerships, cultivation of highly contingent labor markets, and profound but obscure interventions on behalf of maintaining the fiction of free markets. These chapters emphasize not only the expansive and pervasive dimensions of the New Deal state but also the ways in which Americans understood and grappled with the reality of this powerful and diffuse, yet increasingly distant national government. They beyond red and blue also emphasize the overlapping and often constitutive relationships between modern liberalism, modern conservatism, and phenomena associated with neoliberalism.

Connolly offers important insight into the troubling history of African Americans’ relationship to midcentury liberalism. In Connolly’s telling, liberalism often cultivated African American partners in its recourse to markets, its endorsement of state violence, its pragmatic embrace of paternalistic alliances, and its reliance on brokered rather than direct democracy. The result was the maintenance of white supremacy that transcended the ostensible high-water marks of the civil rights era. In his exploration of these dynamics, Connolly locates striking lines of continuity between the seemingly distinct political crises of black disfranchisement and modern neoliberalism, which is too often defined as a crisis of the white working class.

In their chapter on the complex legacies of New Deal federalism, Brent Cebul and Mason Williams argue that red-blue binaries, which often took on regional dimensions (e.g., the “conservative” South and the “liberal” North), have led scholars to miss the centrality of the New Deal in creating not only urban liberalism but also Sunbelt conservatism. By mapping the New Deal’s reliance on loosely regulated fiscal relationships between national and local governments and public and private actors, Cebul and Williams excavate the importance of local politics in shaping the day-to-day realities of the New Deal and postwar state. In their recounting of New Deal federalism, the legacies of Progressive Era reform, the contingent brent cebul, lily geismer, and mason b. williams development of mass democratic publics, Jim Crow, the subtleties of fiscal federalism, the long history of public-private partnerships, and the fierce competition between local elites over the spoils of federal spending emerge as significant factors shaping not only what the New Deal accomplished but also how local actors—urban progressives and Sunbelt boosters alike—remembered and misremembered the importance of the New Deal as they constructed and reconstructed their political ideologies.

Far from snuffing out the centrality of the market and market actors in Americans’ political and cultural imagination, the development of the leviathan state proceeded through market forces and ironically redoubled Americans’ recourse to markets as alternatives to increasingly unwieldy or undemocratic governing institutions. As David M. P. Freund argues in his study of New Deal era financial policy, a new economic orthodoxy emerged around public debt and the money supply that justified unprecedented state interventions between 1932, when Herbert Hoover signed the first Glass-Steagall Act, and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s passage of the Banking Act of 1935. Yet as Freund reveals, politicians and economists from across the political spectrum masked the implications of the government’s new stake in finance, arguing that it mattered not whether public or private assets “stood behind” the currency’s value. Instead, Freund argues that the “U.S. state fundamentally remade the financial landscape in the twentieth century by collateralizing it with public resources,” and that the state’s new powers would be essential to financing unprecedented postwar growth. Freund ultimately contends that policy makers and economists, liberals and conservatives, have been complicit in obscuring this transformation by portraying the value of modern money as purely market driven, further submerging the role of the state and helping maintain fictions of free markets and limited government.

In part 2, “Crisis and Continuity,” the chapters explore the ways in which earlier techniques of governance and experiences of citizenship became renegotiated and amplified through a subsequent period of crisis, the 1970s. The essays identify not only deep continuities between historical techniques of what we might call neoliberal governance but also continuities and convergences between the experiences of contingent forms of citizenship and citizens’ perspectives on the state itself. To be sure, changes in the global political economy and the rights revolutions of the 1960s refashioned the relationships between state and society, state and market, and the lived experience of the leviathan state. But they did not rewrite these relationships on a clean slate. Rather, through a particular emphasis on the 1970s, the chapters suggest ways in which these relationships became recast in the context of earlier state developments and dependencies.

Expanding on themes introduced by Connolly, Andrew Kahrl reveals that racial and ethnic depredations of the U.S. political economy extended and intensified after the Great Society. By focusing on state and local tax-policy administration, Kahrl uncovers a variety of bureaucratic and administrative practices used to punish and exploit the poor and politically disfranchised. Providing a new way to think about the tax politics of the 1970s, Kahrl maps unseen sites of discrimination and chronicles the double injury that myths about black tax delinquency and the undemocratic state have perpetuated: abetting a misguided radical anti-tax, promarket, and antigovernment mood that infects both parties and which simultaneously enforces a locally based, regressively redistributionary tax regime. In his chapter, Suleiman Osman reveals that the “politics of scale” that emerged in the 1970s cut across the ideological and partisan divides and reflected a yearning for both a return to the local and a quest to harness new globalizing capacities. Osman points out the existing limitations in many of the historiographical understandings of that “pivotal decade” and instead calls for an approach that attends to the codevelopment of global and local political outlooks. Through close attention to varieties of political expression and experience on the ground, Osman roots the emergence of neoliberal policy prescriptions not only in the crisis of the national state but also in a multivalent quest to cultivate governing local and global capacities capable of maintaining continuities of rights and opportunity. 

Stuart Schrader suggests that looking beyond national boundaries can provide new ways of understanding how the New Deal state evolved over time and ultimately generated what is perhaps the fundamental social and political crisis of our time: the crisis of black, male incarceration. Like Freund, he explores the way political narratives can obscure forms of state power, and, like Igo, he uncovers roots of the neoliberal surveillance state in New Deal and postwar state-building projects—in his case, abroad. Schrader examines the literature surrounding the “carceral state” and spotlights how the turn toward transnationalism or “the U.S. in the world” has been notably absent. By tracking institutions both inside and outside the state, including law-enforcement agencies and professional organizations, Schrader demonstrates the need beyond red and blue for close empirical attention to the transnational dimensions of the carceral state, suggesting that key aspects of the construction of a postwar U.S. empire have come home to roost. The final essay in the volume, by Rachel Moran, also challenges prevailing ideas of culture wars politics of the last decades of the twentieth century. Moran demonstrates shifting cultural perceptions of the state, following as liberals moved from subsidizing a mass consumer economy in the postwar years to regulatory policing of the family-consumer economy in the 1970s. While scholars have illuminated the gender dynamics of specific policy regimes, Moran reveals how gendered metaphors for specific policies, in this case the Federal Trade Commission’s efforts to regulate commercials targeting children, shaped the language Americans used to describe the state itself. While these terms have surely taken on partisan valences, Moran reveals how such gendered metaphors were animated by anxieties about big government that also emerged across the Atlantic in other Western democracies in crisis, and in the process reshaped the very meanings of liberalism and conservatism at home.

The volume ends with two synthetic conclusions. In the first, Kim Phillips-Fein offers a more sharply delineated appraisal of the promise and perils of the emerging neoliberalism paradigm, suggesting as well auspicious new sites of historical study and analysis. In the second, Matthew Lassiter explores how the kind of political history suggested by this volume (and the works that inspired it) will provide ways to move beyond the emphasis on critical elections, partisan realignment, polarization, and totalizing narratives of neoliberalism. Lassiter’s is also an implicit call to unify the flourishing if fragmented fields of inquiry concerned with the relationship between state power, capitalism, and the experiences of citizenship—of uniting disciplines attuned to both crisis and continuity in political history.

Country ot Lords Kim Phillips-Fein (2026) an interesting critique of the

techno-lords reviewed here

The historian Kim Phillips-Fein’s new book is published amid celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence and its truth “self-evident, that all men are created equal”. Country of Lords, however, is a history of Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight Against Equality in America.

Concise and hard-hitting, the book arrives at a time of glaring social and 
economic inequality, Phillips-Fein seeing Elon Musk “emerging as a trillionaire 
very much on people’s minds, with a deep level of discomfort, both fear and anger 
 about what this portends”.

“It’s always hard to know what’s going to be happening when you have written a 
book,” she said. “But I think those questions about economic equality and the 
impact of extreme levels of economic hierarchy and concentration, and the 
questions, ‘Can you still have a democracy any longer? What are the ways that 
you can counter that? What alternate visions are there if you want to live in a 
world that’s not characterized that way?’, are present.”

Phillips-Fein studies conservatism and “questions about capitalism and democracy”. 
Her first book, Invisible Hands, was a study of businessmen who fought the New Deal 
of the 1930s. Her second, Fear City, about the New York economic crisis of the 1970s,
 was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize. Hers is a major voice. It’s also unique. 
Not many books start with founder John Adams and end with Peter Thiel of Palantir, 
Musk’s fellow techno-fascist. Might such company seem unfair on Adams, the Boston 
lawyer who was part of a great revolution but feared what was unleashed?

“I hope this comes through,” Phillips-Fein said. “Adams is very different from 
[steel magnate] Andrew Carnegie and [Yale professor] William Graham 
Sumner and the late 

19th-century social Darwinists, and the pro-slavery advocates. He’s also definitely 
very different from people who are saying extreme levels of economic inequality 
are good.” Adams, however, was “very ambivalent and skeptical of egalitarian claims
 … during and after the French Revolution: a deep sense of you can have too much 
egalitarianism.
“In his writing, he does also give a strong kind of conservative temperament and foundational sense of the problems of arguing for greater equality and a deep wariness and sense of pessimism about a politics that claims to do that.”

And so Adams takes his place in Country of Lords. Other subjects include 
preachers of race-based inequality from George Fitzhugh, a Confederate 
theorist of slavery as natural good, to Theodore Lothrop Stoddard, a hack 
journalist who had a huge bestseller in 1920 with The Rising Tide of Color 
Against White World-Supremacy, “part of a larger intellectual subculture of 
‘scientific’ racism … in the aftermath of world war one”. There is also 
Carnegie, the Scottish-born tycoon who flourished in the Gilded Age of the 
late 19th century.

“What makes Carnegie so interesting is that he at least allows himself to 
have some sense of ambivalence,” Phillips-Fein said. “He says that while 
the concentration of wealth is absolutely necessary and inevitable, and 
the people at the top … should have the ultimate say over resources, he is 
deeply aware that this is politically dangerous, that … it creates an unstable 
society in which the poor and the working class might actually hate the 
wealthy, and that’s not in the interest of the wealthy in the long run. Also, 
he has a sense that human brotherhood is lost, or some kind of community 
that had existed.”

Carnegie’s father was a Chartist, seeking working-class rights. Carnegie’s 
major outlet for doubts about his wealth came through philanthropy, 
prominently the construction of libraries for working people.
“He had a very deep sense of paternalism,” Phillips-Fein said. “He was 
very invested in the idea of business as a romance and kind of a space of 
adventure and conquest and feudal benevolence. I think Carnegie’s answer 
was ultimately that the wealthy should have their money but they shouldn’t 
bequeath much to their descendants, they should invest it in massive 
philanthropic projects, and this was better than raising wages or other things 
like that … It is his level of guilt and ambivalence that I think does make him 
appealing, if also troubling. I think it raises a set of questions that he certainly 
was never really able to resolve.” The 1892 Carnegie Steel strike and its 
violent suppression devastated Homestead, Pennsylvania, and left 
Carnegie disillusioned. Country of Lords is also a primer on modern 
inequality.

Invisible Hands – the business men’s crusade against the New Deal Kim 
Phillips-Fein (2016)

These Wild English – a family, a class, a country on fire Nicola Wilding (2026)

An amazing and powerful memoir written by someone who is a documentarist 
by trade and which focuses largely on her mother’s membership of the English 
League and her participation in its protests.