Holiday reading for Gordon Brown - TLS Highlights - Times Online - The Diigo Meta page

• 27 Jul 07
  

  sberman

• 12 Jul 07
  

  moosbruxxer

  article

  • Holiday reading for Gordon Brown Vernon Bogdanor     Sheri Berman THE PRIMACY OF POLITICS Social democracy and the making of Europe’s twentieth century 218pp. Cambridge University Press.  Â£40; paperback £14.99 (US $65; paperback, $23.99). 978 0 521 81799 8     Gordon Brown has moved into Ten Downing Street after ten years of Labour government, the longest and most successful period of social-democratic rule in Britain’s history. Yet he finds himself heir, not to a living and viable philosophy of government, but to a collection of ideological ruins. His success will depend on whether he can construct anything new out of these ruins, whether he can breathe new life into the dry bones, whether he can discover a new philosophy of government for the centre-left as fruitful as social democracy was in the past.    In undertaking this enterprise, he will have much to learn from The Primacy of Politics by Sheri Berman; he would find it a great stimulus to thought, and even, on occasion to disagreement. It would, however, be difficult for him to disagree with the view that The Primacy of Politics is one of the most thought-provoking books on twentieth-century ideologies to appear for many years.
  • Holiday reading for Gordon Brown Vernon Bogdanor     Sheri Berman THE PRIMACY OF POLITICS Social democracy and the making of Europe’s twentieth century 218pp. Cambridge University Press.  Â£40; paperback £14.99 (US $65; paperback, $23.99). 978 0 521 81799 8     Gordon Brown has moved into Ten Downing Street after ten years of Labour government, the longest and most successful period of social-democratic rule in Britain’s history. Yet he finds himself heir, not to a living and viable philosophy of government, but to a collection of ideological ruins. His success will depend on whether he can construct anything new out of these ruins, whether he can breathe new life into the dry bones, whether he can discover a new philosophy of government for the centre-left as fruitful as social democracy was in the past.    In undertaking this enterprise, he will have much to learn from The Primacy of Politics by Sheri Berman; he would find it a great stimulus to thought, and even, on occasion to disagreement. It would, however, be difficult for him to disagree with the view that The Primacy of Politics is one of the most thought-provoking books on twentieth-century ideologies to appear for many years.

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