Peter Clarke

All that Bush needed to justify war was the war itself. What Blair would need to justify the war would be not only the end of the former Iraqi regime, which nobody mourns, but a good peace. That is what he promised, not least for Palestine. What was at stake was always the consequences of his actions, not his moral convictions. Whether Iraq and Palestine and the whole region are now better off and a lesser threat to peace is still the test.

For the British, fortunate to escape the traumas of both Communism and Fascism, the two world wars were the defining experience of the 20th century. In both the country avoided invasion and ultimately evaded defeat, if only because in each case France was in the front line, because Russia suffered most of the casualties, and because the United States tardily but effectively identified its own...

The sudden death of Roy Jenkins took us all by surprise. He was over eighty, of course, and with a heart problem that had required major surgery. This latterly gave him a good excuse to sit down at receptions: all the better to conduct vigorous conversational campaigns while maintaining eye-contact, not least, at suitable intervals, with the wine waiter. And during his last couple of years he...

Thatcherism continues to cast its long shadow over British politics. At the general election Tony Blair explicitly claimed to be moving beyond Thatcherism and William Hague implicitly claimed to be moving back to it. During the campaign it was difficult to be sure what image best captured the brooding presence of the eponymous Lady. If she appeared to the Tory faithful as a painfully...

When the Guardian covered the recent Budget, it had a lot of fun unpacking the surprises sprung by Gordon Brown in the course of his demonstration that ‘all this prudence is for a purpose.’ The point was that his ‘updated Protestant work ethic’ offered rewards both for individuals and for the nation as a whole, in the form of tax cuts and increases in public spending. And the spectacle of this fiscal relaxation was so piquant precisely because ‘no Chancellor since Stafford Cripps has taken more relish in donning a hairshirt.’ The survival of this image is impressive. How many readers instinctively shivered or reached for their ration books? Not many under the age of 60, surely. Perhaps the near-homophone helps in ensuring that our flesh duly ‘creeps’; but the real Cripps is a largely forgotten figure today.‘