Diary

Alan Strathern: A report from Sri Lanka, 1 November 2007

“... the UK was as usual being criticised for being soft on terror. It had suspended some aid, and Tony Blair wrote to the president expressing anxiety that the government was escalating hostilities in an unwinnable war and failing to protect human rights. (I hope he had to wrestle with the irony for at least a second or two before he signed this ...”

Short Cuts

Tom Hickman: Outside Appointments, 15 August 2024

“... adviser David Young as minister without portfolio in 1984, but the Labour administrations of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown made much more use of the practice of outside appointments, with Brown appointing Peter Mandelson in 2008 as secretary of state for business and then in 2009 as ‘first secretary of state’, a title that was chosen instead of ...”

Short Cuts

Andrew O’Hagan: The Rich List, 15 June 2023

“... thought there were still too many rich landowners and not enough self-made billionaires. It took Tony Blair to manage that (deregulation, baby), and in 2008 Gordon Brown introduced ‘golden visas’, which allowed swathes of high-net-worth individuals to enjoy what modern Britain had to offer. By 2013, the number one spot on the Rich List was held by ...”

Little Havens of Intimacy

Linda Colley: Margaret Thatcher, 7 September 2000

Margaret Thatcher. Vol. I: The Grocer’s Daughter 
by John Campbell.
Cape, 512 pp., £25, May 2000, 0 224 04097 9Show More
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“... religious leader like Thatcher and then, soon afterwards, to a no less devout male politician, Tony Blair. But nations in decline are always desperate to be saved, suckers for promises of a new dawn. In this respect, too, Thatcher’s religiosity served her well. Like Blair, she was able to convince voters that ...”

Travels on the left

Paul Foot, 2 December 1993

John Strachey: An Intellectual Biography 
by Noel Thompson.
Macmillan, 288 pp., £27.50, May 1993, 0 333 51154 9Show More
John Strachey 
by Michael Newman.
Manchester, 208 pp., £12.99, September 1989, 9780719021749Show More
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“... social reformers’ – an admirable description of what has happened to, say, Gordon Brown or Tony Blair. All those Labour shadow ministers who argue now that it will be too expensive to take railways, coal, gas, telephones, electricity and water back into public ownership should read Contemporary Capitalism, especially the chapter on the balance of ...”

Diary

Alan Bennett: A Shameful Year, 8 January 2004

“... lively girl is senselessly dead. That’s all.8 March. A phrase often in the mouth of Bush and Blair is ‘Our patience is exhausted.’ It’s a phrase that is seldom used by anyone who had much patience in the first place; Hitler was quite fond of it.14 March. To Oxford to vote for the chancellor, though it doesn’t seem very long since I did the same ...”

The Precautionary Principle

David Runciman: Taking a Chance on War, 1 April 2004

“... On 5 March, Tony Blair gave a speech in his Sedgefield constituency in which he sought to justify his actions in Iraq by emphasising the unprecedented threat that global terrorism poses to the civilised world. He called this threat ‘real and existential’, and argued that politicians had no choice but to confront it ‘whatever the political cost ...”

The Mask It Wears

Pankaj Mishra: The Wrong Human Rights, 21 June 2018

The People v. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It 
by Yascha Mounk.
Harvard, 400 pp., £21.95, March 2018, 978 0 674 97682 5Show More
Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World 
by Samuel Moyn.
Harvard, 277 pp., £21.95, April 2018, 978 0 674 73756 3Show More
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“... a centrist political party with a treasure trove of £50 million has surfaced. One of its patrons, Tony Blair, explained in the New York Times last March that ‘for liberal democracy to survive and thrive, we must build a new coalition that is popular, not populist.’ A reinvigorated centrism, he wrote, had to acknowledge ‘genuine cultural ...”

On with the Pooling and Merging

Neal Ascherson: The Incomparable Tom Nairn, 17 February 2000

After Britain: New Labour and the Return of Scotland 
by Tom Nairn.
Granta, 336 pp., £15.99, January 2000, 1 86207 293 0Show More
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“... in the world. Europe will not wait for us.’ The emergence of England is inevitable (‘beyond Blair’s parody of Britain, a renovated England is certain’), perhaps guided by the growing movement for an English parliament, but Nairn has misgivings about what English nationalism will be like. If the English question is too much for the old British system ...”

Ghosts in the Palace

Tom Nairn, 24 April 1997

“... But here, too, the paternalistic parade is no more. It was condemned under Kinnock, and Tony Blair delivered the coup de grâce. Amitai Etzioni and Geoff Mulgan’s Demos have been upgraded to fill the community-relations slot which was once the Monarchy’s by right. Of course democracy ought to have moved in to supplant the deficiencies of a ...”

What the neighbours are up to

Patrick Cockburn: On the Iranian Border, 8 June 2006

“... Probably the only place in Iraq where this is not evident is inside the Green Zone, where Tony Blair appeared the day after Maliki announced his cabinet. Blair’s statements at a press conference were a useful checklist of what is not happening in Iraq. He praised the formation of ‘a government of national ...”

After Mubarak

Adam Shatz, 17 February 2011

“... ridiculed for saying that Mubarak couldn’t be a dictator because he was friendly with Israel; Tony Blair praised him as ‘immensely courageous and a force for good’ – yesterday’s message. But when Blair said that Egypt’s transition had to be ‘managed’ – presumably by the West – so as not to ...”

Diary

Jenny Diski: New words, 1 January 1998

“... views, a resident of North London, and in particular the borough of Islington’ – so not Tony Blair then), though with a recommendation to use the formulation Islington person. Things aren’t looking good for the businessman, either. He has had to add karoshi (‘death caused by overwork or job-related exhaustion’) to his three-word Japanese ...”

On Thatcher

“... do is debate alternatives within its framework. It is essential to demythologise ‘Thatcherism’.Tony Blair, 29 October 1987With​ Mrs Thatcher safely in the lead, that voice and the little scuttling walk threatening to lead us into the next century, Conservative commentators like P. Worsthorne feel it now safe to admit that perhaps there is just a ...”

Prizefighters

Mark Mazower: The UN, 22 March 2007

The Best Intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of American Power 
by James Traub.
Bloomsbury, 442 pp., £20, November 2006, 0 7475 8087 1Show More
The Parliament of Man: The United Nations and the Quest for World Government 
by Paul Kennedy.
Allen Lane, 361 pp., £25, July 2006, 0 7139 9375 8Show More
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“... the boot in, time after time. Why give the UN any say in the postwar reconstruction of Iraq – as Tony Blair and Joschka Fischer were insisting – when it had been so unhelpful beforehand? Why, in fact, have anything more to do with it? Better ignore it, let it quietly wither away, and make do in future with ad hoc military alliances. It is possible ...”
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