[…] words, while all the intelligence on Iraq was wrong, no-one was to blame. And yet, in the midst of this, in a discussion of why Bush and Blair went to war, Ross offers this pregnant sentence: ‘It was well-known that Hussein had allocated all the massively lucrative post-sanctions contracts to French, Chinese, Russian and […]
[…] fact, as a great wasted talent. This man, we are routinely assured, could have led either the Conservative or the Labour party; but then so could Tony Blair, so this hardly amounts to a great endorsement, even assuming its validity. But what does this biography contribute to the debate? Beckett was never one of […]
[…] cover-up inquiry in the Profumo case. In Thatcher & Sons: A Revolution in Three Acts (2006) Simon Jenkins comments that one effect of the Thatcher, Major and Blair years has been the running down of local and regional democracy and the enormous growth in the unelected power of the Treasury. The Conservatives had a […]
[…] the Western Sahara, Vanunu etc. Among the authors of these pieces are Anita Roddick and George Galloway MP. I suppose it represents the internationalism of the pre- Blair Labour party, and though its subject matter didn’t ring any bells for me, its appearance is welcome. £12 for 12 issues, cheques made payable to TUCND, […]
[…] listing Mo Mowlam, Chris Smith, Peter Mandelson, Liz Symons, George Robertson and Jonathan Powell as important BAP members appointed to high office under new Prime Minister Tony Blair. After listing a small number of non-Labour BAP candidates in the election the newsletter added: ‘Meanwhile James Naughtie (’89) and Jeremy Paxman (’90) gave them all […]
[…] Highly enjoyable and entertaining, anyway. There is one conspicuous absentee here. The major British millennial cult is the New Labour group currently fronting the Labour Party. Tony Blair gives every indication to me of being about to drift away on a pillow of guff from his moorings among the rest of us.(1) Notes Preparing […]
[…] two and a half years later, with a new identity. Davies’s book raises very important issues at the centre of British operations in Ireland. Just as the Blair government has conceded a fresh inquiry into Bloody Sunday so we must demand an inquiry into official collusion with the loyalist murder squads. Of course, when […]
[…] Politics: Security Intelligence and the Liberal Democratic State, was reviewed in Lobster 27. This may reflect one of the core, unstated beliefs at the heart of the Blair ‘modernisation’ of the Labour Party. Modernisation equals pre-emptive capitulation. I seem to remember that the Canadian model was cited as an exemplar in a resolution on […]
[PDF file]: […] The accounts that have appeared include the absurdly self-centred, stating-the-obvious-at-alltimes tales of Peter Mandelson; the fantastic, optimistic and daytime TV-oriented (and thus immensely popular) narrative of Tony Blair; Jonathan Powell’s treatise on Machiavellianism; and the diarised compendium of sad little stories from Chris Mullin, as he crept away from the political stage after 2005. […]
[PDF file]: […] it that – uniquely among modern Presidential enactions – there was no photographer present to capture the historic moment. It is fitting that Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair, who gave the UK its own FOI Act, has since attempted to disassociate himself from the law he presented to the Queen for Royal Assent in […]
