This episode discusses Gordon Brown's time in office through two main questions:

Was Gordon Brown's premiership a step change from Tony Blair's, or more of the same? (First 20 minutes)

From the perspective of hindsight, how might we rate Gordon Brown's policies? (second half)

Reading, watching and listening that went into making this podcast (recommended): 

• My Life, Our Times by Gordon Brown
• The End of the Party by Andrew Rawnsley
• Blair and Brown the New Labour Revolution on the BBC
• Was Gordon Brown a good prime minister? New Statesman Podcast
• Gordon Brown The Presidents and the Prime Ministers with Iain Dale

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In this episode, we look at Tony Blair’s New Labour Government. We mainly focus on his first few years of government, drawing on Andrew Rawnsley’s great book about this period: ‘Servants of the People: The Inside Story of New Labour’. I also take some inspiration from the BBC documentary ‘Blair & Brown: The New Labour Revolution’. The main questions I consider in this episode are what did New Labour achieve and to what extent could it have achieved more in government.

Recommendations:

1. Servants of the People: The Inside Story of New Labour by Andrew Rawnsley
2. Blair & Brown: The New Labour Revolution BBC iPlayer
3. Labour: The Wilderness Years
4. I can’t fully endorse Tony Blair’s biography as it’s a little bit self-justifying and not reflective enough in my opinion; there’s quite a lot of Tony Blair asserting ‘I did x because I just thought it was the right thing to do’ and not really allowing himself too much deep reflection. No doubt this confidence was part of what made him an effective leader but in an autobiography you hope for a bit more introspection and self-awareness. With all that said, if you want to understand the psychology of Blair, this is a good one to read (with a critical eye).

In this first podcast I talk through Andrew Hindmoor's book '12 Days that Made Modern Britain' (see link below) giving my thoughts on the days he's chosen as key turning points in modern British history. 

The 12 days from the book which I discuss are:

1. The 28th of September 1976. The day Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan renounced Keynesian economics. 
2. The 4th of May 1979. The day Margaret Thatcher became Britain's first female prime minister. 
3. The 3rd of March 1985. The day the miners' strike ended. 
4. The 20th of September 1988. The day of Margaret Thatcher's 'Bruges speech'. 
5. The 18th of May 1992. The day the television rights for the Premier League were sold to BskyB. 
6. The 22nd of April 1993. The day that young black teenager Stephen Lawrence was murdered by racist thugs. 
7. The 10th April 1998. The day of the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. 
8. The 11th of September 2001. The day of the Al Qaeda attacks on the United States. 
9.  The 5th of December 2004. The day Chris Cramp and Matthew Roche became the first gay couple in the UK to become civil partners under the Civil Partnership Act. 
10. The 13th of September 2007. The day the BBC reported that the Northern Rock bank was in trouble. 
11. The 8th of May 2009. The day The Daily Telegraph began to publish details of MPs' expense claims. 
12. The 1st of February 2017. The day the House of Commons voted to invoke Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union.

At the end of the podcast, I also indulge in giving a few of my own suggestions of days that made modern Britain.


https://www.waterstones.com/book/twelve-days-that-made-modern-britain/andrew-hindmoor/9780198831785 

Links to two books I recommend during the podcast:

https://www.wob.com/en-gb/books/dominic-sandbrook/who-dares-wins/9780141975283

https://www.waterstones.com/book/broken-heartlands/sebastian-payne/9781529067361