Philip Gould, Baron Gould of Brookwood

Philip Gould, Baron Gould of Brookwood (30 March 1950 – 6 November 2011 ) was a British political consultant, and former advertising executive, who worked for the Labour Party.

Appointed by Director of Communications Peter Mandelson, he was strategy and polling adviser to the Labour Party in the general elections of 1987, 1992, 1997, 2001 and 2005. Involved in 'modernising' the party's image, Gould was particularly associated with Tony Blair and New Labour.

Early life and education Gould grew up in Woking as the son of a headmaster, but failed his 11-plus and went to a secondary modern school.

Career 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, Gould recruited the Shadow Communications Agency, a team of communications volunteers who created Labour's unsuccessful 1987 election campaign. This led to his position of influence within the Labour Party under Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair.

In 1992, he planned the Sheffield Rally for the Labour Party, eight days before its loss of the 1992 general election.

Gould was the author of a leaked memo which, in 2000, described the New Labour brand as being contaminated.

On 7 June 2004 he was created a life peer taking the title Baron Gould of Brookwood, of Brookwood in the County of Surrey.

In 2007, he assumed a non-executive director role at Freud Communications, the firm of Blair's former diary secretary, Kate Garvey.

Illness

Preceding an interview with Andrew Marr on a Sunday morning BBC TV show on 18 September 2011, it was revealed that his treatment for three-times recurring cancer of the oesophagus had been unsuccessful. After being told by his doctor that he only had three months to live, Gould described himself as being in the "death zone":

Gould then turned his impending death into a campaign as a way of making his departure easier for his wife and daughters as well as helping others by writing and talking about facing up to death. His efforts resulted in an eight–minute film entitled, When I Die: Lessons from the Death Zone, a documentary of Gould's final weeks of life that was released on the video–sharing website YouTube before the release of his book by the same name.

Death Gould died on 6 November 2011 at the Royal Marsden Hospital, a specialist cancer treatment hospital in London.

It was stated that proceeds from his 2012 book When I Die: Lessons from the Death Zone would go to the National Oesophago–Gastric Cancer Fund and the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity.

Works Gould, Philip (1999). The Unfinished Revolution: How the Modernisers Saved the Labour Party, Abacus, Gould, Philip (2011). The Unfinished Revolution: How New Labour Changed British Politics Forever, Abacus, Gould, Philip (2012). When I Die: Lessons from the Death Zone, Little Brown,

Biography Dennis Kavanagh (2012). Philip Gould: An Unfinished Life, Palgrave Macmillan,

Arms