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- Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
"Explosive" – Daily Telegraph "Utterly gripping" – The Scotsman "Racy, lucid and very well-informed" – Evening Standard "Achingly vivid and horribly revealing" – BookTalk "Devastatingly forthright" – Sunday Times "Tremendous" – Sunday Times *** From 1999 to 2009, Damian McBride worked at the heart of the Treasury and No. 10. He was a pivotal member of Gordon Brown's inner circle before a notorious scandal propelled him out of Downing Street and onto the front pages. When he released his memoir Power Trip in 2013, its frank depiction of the dirty work that props up British politics was greeted with shock, disgust and awe. Never before had the lid been blown off the Westminster system with such ferocity. Throughout the book, McBride made no effort to cleanse his reputation; instead, he sought relentlessly to expose the manipulation, plotting and skullduggery that lay at New Labour's core. Ten years on, Power Trip remains the essential guide to understanding the murky underbelly of modern politics and how it can shape and corrupt those who inhabit it for too long. Now updated with a new foreword, this is the 10th anniversary edition of the most explosive political memoir of the past decade.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
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Praise for Power Trip
‘McBride has a tremendous narrative gift, as well as great clarity of thought. The latter is a marvel.’
DOMINIC LAWSON, SUNDAY TIMES
‘[I]t succeeds as a laddish manual of political thuggery conducted while at least twice the drink-drive limit.’
FRANCIS ELLIOTT, THE TIMES
‘I’ve developed an unlikely crush on Damian McBride … His performance on Newsnight was masterly, reducing Paxo to platitudes. McBride’s book Power Trip strips away the fluff, the verbiage, the feeble excuses and the patronising twaddle that gushes from our political leaders and their spin-doctors and we are left with the equivalent of cage fighting; The Thick of It now looks tame…’
JANET STREET PORTER, INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
‘It is being billed as the “must-read” political book of the year.’
THEINDEPENDENT
‘Current Affairs Book of the Year: This devastatingly forthright account of McBride’s years as Gordon Brown’s spin doctor and attack dog is the best book I have read all year.’
SIAN GRIFFITHS, SUNDAY TIMES
‘McBride has now written unsparing yet defiant confessions of a “nasty bastard” – a detailed account of a powerful media manipulator at work, with advice on when lying works and honesty as a tool of deceit. It is pacy and McBride writes with a nice turn of phrase … As a glimpse into the Brown bunker it offers much.’
ROBERT SHRIMSLEY, FINANCIAL TIMES
‘[I]ts self-lacerating candour and humour deserve a wide audience. It is both a memoir and a manual, one that will serve historians, students of the craft of politics and – if they take the trouble to read it – those Conservatives who are even now working on how to get David Cameron back to Downing Street in 2015. It is the essential political book of the year … His memoir will be read first for the elegant and lightly told vignettes. McBride can write, which makes it a pleasure to read…’
BENEDICT BROGAN, DAILY TELEGRAPH
‘I have always admired McBride’s writing – imagine Luca Brasi with a Cambridge degree – and am not surprised that his memoirs are proving so gripping, given the material and his genuine talent as a stylist.’
MATTHEW D’ANCONA, DAILY TELEGRAPH
‘The most explosive – and expletive-laden – political book of the year. The memoir of Gordon Brown’s former spin-doctor is not for the faint of heart, but it contains some of the year’s most riveting prose and gives an insight into our political system most politicians would rather you didn’t see.’
DAN HODGES, DAILY TELEGRAPH
‘Best Political Book of the Year’
TOBY YOUNG, DAILY TELEGRAPH
‘Power Trip is the political memoir of 2013: whatever your feelings about Gordon Brown’s former spin-doctor – “McPoison” – he has written a racy, lucid and very well-informed account of the last years of New Labour.’
ANDREW NEATHER, EVENING STANDARD
‘A tale of treachery, dishonesty, expletives undeleted, and the subversion of elected governments by a talented rogue employee who was allowed to run rings round the system, largely unchecked.’
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
‘50 shades of Labour skulduggery’
PETER MCKAY, DAILY MAIL
‘It is well written, generous to friend and foe alike and the author’s undoubted boastfulness is tempered by heavy doses of self-deprecation.’
CHRIS MULLIN, THE NEW REVIEW
‘Damian McBride is a bastard. And, unusually for a memoirist, he’s very keen to let you know that from the start … Power Trip is often as interesting for what it doesn’t say as for what it does.’
HELEN LEWIS, NEW STATESMAN
‘[A] very readable, and at times thoughtful, book … Reading Power Trip, one is both fascinated and appalled by McBride’s brutal philosophy, self-deception and pride in twisting the truth. What drives him from the first time he is asked to do some work for Brown is his love and admiration for this most unlovable politician.’
TOTAL POLITICS
‘Westminster insiders and political reporters have gleefully digested the well-told tales in this long-awaited book.’
GUIDO FAWKES, THE SPECTATOR
‘It is an eye-opener about the factionalism – and hate – that can exist within one government.’
ALISON PHILLIPS, DAILY MIRROR
‘[Power Trip] reveals that McBride’s notoriety was well deserved.’
THE WEEK
‘It’s worth [reading] for the insights McBride provides into the way we were governed during the New Labour years.’
CHOICE MAGAZINE
‘For me the undisputed political book of the year has to be Power Trip - disgraced spin-doctor Damian McBride’s occasionally terrifying account of his life and work in the court of Gordon Brown. He gives an achingly vivid account of his role in New Labour’s palace intrigues in his confessional memoir, Power Trip. And he managed to shock even Westminster insiders who’d had an occasional glimpse of his activities … [T]here are enough accounts of systemic leaking and brutal smears to provide a horribly revealing insight into the seamy side of political life. And it’s very well written.’
MARK D’ARCY, BOOKTALK
‘A cracking read’
LOCAL TRANSPORT TODAY
‘This accessible account of the role of Gordon Brown’s former spin-doctor Damian McBride provides an insight into many of the main players as well as the murky world of Westminster’s journalistic goldfish bowl … McBride has an interesting view on the Brown–Blair feud.’
PAUL DONOVAN, MORNING STAR
‘This is probably the most enjoyable book you can read about that chapter of Britain’s political history. Come to think of it, it’s probably the most enjoyable book I’ve read all year.’
MILO YIANNOPOULOS, THE KERNEL
To my beloved Mum, the best person in this best of all possible worlds.
To my late, much-loved Dad, who taught me the joy of writing, among other things.
To my three brilliant big brothers, Chris, Nick and Ben, who had the right idea sticking to law.
To Penny and Balshen, who put up with me for ten years of this story, and deserved much better.
To my closest pals, Steve, Anthony and Damien, who were there through thick and thin.
To Mr and Mrs Bradley, without whom this book would not exist. So blame them.
And to Gordon, the greatest man I ever met: thanks for all you did.
CONTENTS
EPILOGUE
53
HACKING
This chapter was originally removed due to legal restrictions
As usual for a late Friday afternoon in my Treasury days, I was hard at work, sat in a pub in Waterloo making phone calls and meeting members of the Sunday lobby. A call came through from a senior tabloid journalist who’d never contacted me before.
‘Hi, Mr McBride, sorry to land this on you, but I’ve got something I need to put to you – have you got a minute? Fine. I’ve been speaking to a gentleman who claims his partner had an affair with Gordon Brown, and because they’ve just split up, he now feels ready to tell his story. So I just need to put all the details to you, and you can tell me if there’s anything you want to challenge.’
I interrupted, following one of my cardinal rules that if it sounds like a serious problem and you’re unprepared for it, you get off the phone as quickly as possible before anything can be formally put to you and before you can give any form of response.
‘Now hold on, if that’s what it is, I’m really not in a position to have this conversation now. I haven’t got a pad to take notes, I’m in the middle of another meeting, there’s lots of background noise. Can you do me a favour and send me an email with the main points, so I can just check this out, then we can have a proper conversation.’
‘I will do that, definitely,’ he said, ‘but can I just quickly give you the bare bones – it won’t take a minute.’ ‘Fine, but – just to be clear – I can’t hear you very well so you’re going to have to put all this to me properly later on, and I can’t respond to anything until you do that.’ ‘Great!’, he said cheerily.
What followed was a bizarre, rambling account of the journalist randomly meeting a guy, discussing their respective love lives, getting onto the subject of cheating partners, and eventually Gordon’s name coming up. I went from thinking the guy he’d met was a fantasist to thinking the journalist himself was making up the story as he went along. It was the oddest phone call I ever took in all the time I was doing the job.
