Biteback Publishing today announces the publication in September of Power Trip: A Decade of Policy, Plots and Spin, by former government special adviser Damian McBride. It is a book which will send shivers down the back of the Labour establishment as it reveals the truth about life within Gordon Brown’s government. World rights were acquired for a five figure advance in a highly competitive bid.
From 1999-2009, Damian McBride worked at the heart of the Treasury and No10, becoming one of the most controversial political figures of the last decade, before a notorious scandal propelled him onto the front pages and out of Downing Street. In Power Trip, he writes candidly about his experiences at the heart of government, and provides the first genuine insider’s account of Gordon Brown’s time as Chancellor and Prime Minister. He reveals the personal feuds, political plots, and media manipulation which lay at New Labour’s core, and provides a fascinating, funny, and at times shocking account of how government really works. His own journey from naive civil servant to disgraced spin-doctor is also laid bare, with brutal honesty. Power Trip is a riveting memoir and an eye-opening expose of politics in Britain. It is also an intensely personal, and sometimes emotional book. How do you cope with one day being at the centre of power and the next day cast aside, on your own? Pre-order the book here.
Iain Dale, Managing Director of Biteback says:
I have absolute confidence in predicting Damian’s book will be seen as the political memoir of the year. I’ve been chasing this book for at least eighteen months and am delighted to have persuaded Damian to put pen to paper. It confirms Biteback as the ‘go-to’ publisher for political books. Everyone knows from his blog that Damian is a brilliantly incisive writer and that he was in a unique position to expose what being at the centre of power in the Brown government was really like.
Damian McBride comments: “Given that Iain Dale was one of my supposed enemies when I was working in Downing Street, he was the last person I expected to be working with, but his thoughts on what this book should be about exactly matched my own, and I am delighted to be publishing it with him. I hope that, like my blog, this book will be a chance not only to give my account of what happened during Gordon Brown’s time in office, but also to give an insight into what life is like for those working in government today.”
Power Trip: A Decade of Policy, Plots and Spin will be published on 23 September in hardback. Price: £20.00
Royalties from sales of the book will be split between Damian McBride’s current employers, CAFOD (the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development), and the appeal by his former employers, Finchley Catholic High School, to build a new sixth form centre.