[…] eternal, blessed, values of England. Much Conservative history has been written by Conservatives, and a myth has been perpetuated. As Davies points out in his introduction, the Labour Party and its politicians have been the subject of much greater and more critical exposure – as one would expect of anything new. As a consequence, […]
Edward Pearce London: Little, Brown, 2002, £25, h/b. Compared to the present crop of media-trained, PR-conscious, line-following, careerist pigmies who comprise the current Labour Cabinet, Denis Healey looks like a giant from a golden age. Before his well known roles as Minister of Defence and Chancellor of the Exchequer (during the Tory-induced inflation […]
The unspeakable Martin Kettle of The Guardian is a political journalist who has been pretty close to, and supportive of, New Labour since the 1990s. His article ‘The special relationship that squandered a noble cause’ (27 May 2006) opened with this: ‘The long arc of Tony Blair’s rise and decline has been punctuated by […]
Peter Oborne and Simon Walters London: Aurum Press, 2004 p/back, £8.99 If you were going to read only one book on New Labour, this account of the New Labour people and their relationships with the media, from the days of opposition through to Campbell’s resignation in the wake of the death of Dr […]
[…] you have to get rid of people: ‘they gum up the works’. That the firm was a little people-light was simply put down to their efficiency. Fewer labour units equalled more profits. Andersen Andersen, the company’s auditor, who let these figures pass, would hardly have survived a moderately close inspection of its own track […]
[…] and the attack on dictators is even-handed to include Castro, Mugabe and Chavez alongside Pinochet and other hate figures of the Left. Furthermore, many of the New Labour foreign policy elite cut their student teeth on campaigns against ‘fascist’ dictators and would have had a sympathetic ear from State Department officials who disapproved of […]
[…] Andrew Gilligan blamed by the internal BBC inquiry while all his superiors escaped censure throws a little more light on the tightness of the New Labour network. Conducting the investigation was Caroline Thomson, the BBC director of policy, who is married to Roger Liddle, Tony Blair’s adviser on defence. Thomson and Liddle, […]
[…] book on the Miner’s strike; fell in love with Thatcherism; studied in the States; joined a think tank and St Antony’s College (1996-99); and fronted for New Labour via the Foreign Policy Centre (1999 onwards). He is unclear when he left the Communist Party but by 1997 he was sitting next to John Bolton […]
The personal and the political A small anecdotal footnote to Labour history. One of the great puzzles for those who followed the career of party leader Hugh Gaitskell was why, shortly before his death in 1963, he chose to oppose British entry to the then Common Market when his right-wing party colleagues and American […]
[…] sovereignty was suppressed rather than admit that Parliament would have to accept European regulations that conflicted with its own statutes. Officials were encouraged to spy on the Labour Party’s plans to oppose the terms of entry and even drafted speeches for pro-European Labour frontbenchers to deliver at their party conference. The unit was told […]
