In the space
of three years he went from being lauded as the UK's most successful chancellor
of the exchequer who had declared the «end
of boom and bust» and «the beginning
of a
new Golden
Age» to presiding over a country in a debilitating credit crunch amid Labour in - fighting, a breakdown in relations with many colleagues including his chancellor, and ultimately a failure to dissuade the electorate against the Tory / Lib Dem
mantra that Labour allowed it all to go wrong.
Mark Lynas quotes Stewart Brand here, using the
mantra as a guiding metaphor for his
new book The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the
Age of Humans.