Tag Archives: deborah mattinson

Mark Pack

Campaign Corner: What campaigning books are worth reading?

By Mark Pack | Sun 30th October 2011 - 4:50 pm

The Campaign Corner series looks to give three tips about commonly asked campaign issues. Do get in touch if you have any questions you would like to suggest.

Today’s Campaign Corner question: I prefer learning by reading rather than by hearing people speak at training sessions. What campaigning books would you recommend?

Lots of possible answers, but in the spirit of Campaign Corner’s love of threes, here are just three, deliberately chosen as one each from the main party perspectives:

Continue reading »
Posted in Campaign Corner | Also tagged , and | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

The four best books on the British general election of 2010

By Mark Pack | Wed 16th March 2011 - 10:25 am

Over the last few months, I’ve read (and mostly reviewed on this site) all the books I’ve found published so far about the 2010 general election and the subsequent coalition negotiations, not to mention a fair number about the political events leading up to the general election over the preceding years.

I’ve yet to read a book that is really bad, although many do have very similar content to each other. A few gems either have original content or present that common ground in particularly strong ways. So based on that here are my top four recommended books about the British …

Continue reading »
Posted in Books and Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Book review: Peter Mandelson’s The Third Man – Life at the heart of New Labour

By Mark Pack | Sat 21st August 2010 - 2:20 pm

At the book’s title suggests, Peter Mandelson’s memoirs The Third Man do not hold back from placing himself not only at the heart of New Labour but also at its top, variously using the phrases the three musketeers or the triumvirate to describe himself and the two Prime Ministers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Mandelson is also, alongside Peter Watt and Deborah Mattinson, part of another trio – Labour insiders who have recently published their account of life in New Labour. They all scatter some compliments about Brown through their books, but the overall picture painted of Gordon Brown is a deeply unflattering one. It’s a picture of a once talented politician and strategic thinker who spent over a decade in a sulk at not becoming Labour leader, frequently indulging in highly partisan infighting and repeatedly pushing to one side policy priorities as so many at the top of Labour were consumed with trying to keep the Blair-Brown show from completely imploding. As Mandelson records it, even Gordon Brown (speaking to him in 2008) admitted,

Continue reading »
Posted in Books | Also tagged , , and | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

Book review: Talking to a brick wall by Deborah Mattinson

By Mark Pack | Tue 20th July 2010 - 10:20 am

Deborah Mattinson’s account of what she saw during her time as a leading pollster to the Labour Party certainly doesn’t stint in portraying her own role in what the book calls “Europe’s greatest election winning machine of the modern era”. The fact that Labour won three general elections in a row and yet the fact that, even looking no further than the same country and the same part of the century, the preceding Conservative government did one better and won four general elections in a row, does provide a warning against taking everything in the book – whether from the …

Continue reading »
Posted in Books | Also tagged , and | 1 Comment
Advert



Recent Comments

  • User AvatarOnceALibDem 19th Aug - 12:59am
    "The EU Withdrawal act is clear repeal happens on ‘exit day’ not any specific date." Only partly correct. The act defines 'exit day' as a...
  • User AvatarMichael BG 19th Aug - 12:00am
    Matt, Having a referendum puts back when a general election will be held. I think it is unlikely that the next general election will be...
  • User Avatarmatt 18th Aug - 11:24pm
    There is not a hope in hell of Corbyn getting into No 10, we are not going to see a Labour Prime minister for some...
  • User AvatarMichael BG 18th Aug - 11:23pm
    Mack, The examples I gave were in the nineteenth century not the eighteenth. The examples were of a new government being formed and then a...
  • User AvatarDavid-1 18th Aug - 11:02pm
    To actually get any sort of Vote of No Confidence through parliament, and any sort of new government in place, the Remain forces will need...
  • User AvatarRoland Postle 18th Aug - 10:36pm
    @ Dilettante Eye The EU Withdrawal act is clear repeal happens on 'exit day' not any specific date. It's the very first thing mentioned: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2018/16/crossheading/repeal-of-the-eca/enacted...
Sun 18th Aug 2019
00:00
Village Action Day 🔸
Sat 24th Aug 2019
12:00
Pizza and Politics with Mark Pack
Thu 29th Aug 2019
Bury BC, Radcliffe West by-election
Mon 9th Sep 2019
18:30
An Evening for Paddy