Philip Gould, Baron Gould of Brookwood

For the musician, see Phil Gould (musician).

Philip Gould, Baron Gould of Brookwood (born 30 March 1950) is a British political adviser closely linked with the Labour Party and Tony Blair. He was strategy and polling adviser to the party in the general elections of 1987, 1992, 1997, 2001 and 2005. Gould was one of the key architects of the modern communications revolution inside the Labour Party of the 1980s, which resulted in the emergence of New Labour. As such, he was a close colleague of Labour's Director of Communications in the late 1980s, Peter Mandelson, and Alastair Campbell.

Gould grew up in Woking, where his father was a headmaster, but failed his 11-plus and went to a Secondary modern school. Leaving school with only one O-level, he went on to study at East London College, based in Toynbee Hall, where he gained four A-levels. He subsequently won a place at the University of Sussex in 1971 to study politics, graduating in 1974. . Gould then went to the London School of Economics to study for an MSc in the history of political thought, where he was taught by the eminent political scientist Michael Oakeshott. More recently he has returned to the LSE to teach a course in Politics and Communication.

After a career in advertising, and with the success of his wife Gail Rebuck (later CEO of Random House UK), whom he had met at Sussex, Gould founded his own polling and strategy company, Philip Gould Associates, in 1985. Appointed by Mandelson (a friend from University), Gould recruited the Shadow Communications Agency, a team of communication volunteers, who created Labour's admired, if unsuccessful, 1987 election campaign. This led to his position of influence within the Labour Party under Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair.

In the afterword of his (only) book The Unfinished Revolution: How the Modernisers Saved the Labour Party (1998) he proposed the amalgamation of the Labour and Liberal Democratic Parties, the purpose of this being the unity of all anti-conservative forces in Britain. This, he said, should facilitate the creation of "the progressive century", "a century in which progressive politics can take hold, and in which the great majority of working people are helped and supported … not now and again but again and again", this being in contrast to the previous "conservative century".

He was the writer of a leaked memo which, in 2000, described the New Labour brand as being contaminated.[1]

On 7 June 2004 he was made a life peer as Baron Gould of Brookwood, of Brookwood in the County of Surrey.

He has two daughters; one, the Hon. Georgia Gould, works as website and online coordinator for the Tony Blair Foundation.

Preceeding an interview with Andrew Marr on the Sunday morning BBC TV show, 18 September 2011, it was revealed that his treatment for three-times recurring oesophageal cancer had been unsuccessful, and that he would only have a few months to live. He discussed this in detail in the interview. It also emerged during this interview that rather than entrusting his healthcare to the NHS, he had flown to New York to be operated on by Murray Brennan at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He conceded that this was at odds with his lifelong affiliation with the Labour Party.

Works

• Gould, Philip (1999). The Unfinished Revolution: How the Modernisers Saved the Labour Party Abacus, ISBN 0-349-11177-4

References

• Introduction in the House of Lords House of Lords minutes of proceedings, 19 July 2004