Tag Archives: anthony seldon

Brown at 10: the authoritative account – which lays into Ed Balls

When it first came out Brown at 10 by Anthony Seldon and Guy Lodge was extremely well received for its authoritative detail and the revised paperback edition maintains that standard well. With Seldon being one of the founders of the modern school of contemporary history, it is no surprise that the book follows the thorough, heavily documented approach contemporary historians strive for – with over 1 million words of interviews recorded for posterity (even if many are, for the next 30 years, withheld from public view) and extensive access to private diaries.

The huge depth of research is accompanied by …

Posted in Books | Also tagged , , , , and | 3 Comments

Book review: the Anthony Seldon solution to restoring trust in national life

Written over last summer by Professor Anthony Seldon and a mini-army of assistants, Trust is at heart both an optimistic and a pessimistic book.

Optimistic because one of Seldon’s arguments is that “trusting and being trustworthy are the sovereign human virtues we need today trust is natural: we were born trusting and the state of nature is to be trusting”. Pessimistic because his formula for restoring trust is not a simple checklists of policies but rather a harder and more fundamental shift in how individuals behave and a recipe of broad change across nearly every part of public policy.

Posted in Books | Also tagged | 4 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • Paul R
    Jana - There is no mention of any form of “political union” anywhere in the EU Treaties. Indeed, this was explicitly clarified by the other leaders in t...
  • Daniel Walker
    @theakes "first past the post was a winner for us in 2024. Suggest we keep our heads down and live with it." If your opinion on an electoral system—...
  • Paul Holmes
    Rob, you also say that we can't be the party of the NHS or the Environment because Labour and the Greens have those. Surely it is a mistake to abandon whole are...
  • Paul Holmes
    Rob, you offer two possible groups of key target supporters for the Liberal Democrats. However, both are, as you note, just subsets of the affluent middle class...
  • Peter Wrigley
    @Jana: I regrade myself as an extremest for liberalism: the maximum amount of individual freedom that doesn't infringe the freedom others. I’m also pretty ke...