“... 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 ...”

“... MPs in 2024 were former lobbyists; Starmer’s initial apparatus included a startling number of Blair functionaries.The political consequences of Mandelson’s fall are not yet clear. Two key members of staff at Downing Street have gone: Tim Allan and Morgan McSweeney, both of them close to Mandelson. McSweeney was formally Starmer’s chief of staff, but ...”

“... have tended to harden. A few weeks after the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, Tony Blair told the Labour Party conference that people should keep in mind the common values of Jews, Muslims and Christians. ‘The true followers of Islam are our brothers and sisters in this struggle,’ he said. ‘Bin Laden is no more obedient to the ...”

“... public image in 140 characters.’ As so often in this book, the real message here is the dig at Blair. Unlike Brown, Blair never even mastered email, which left him free to indulge his taste for superficial theatrics. Lucky old Tony didn’t have to grapple with his inbox night and ...”

“... and minions), which goes to show that dominance does not automatically translate into success. Tony Blair was not a dominant prime minister: how could he be, having ceded control over large areas of domestic policy to Gordon Brown before he even arrived at No. 10, and then lacking the nerve or political will to claw any of it back? What ...”

“... through the long night of Thatcherism to the ruthlessly conservative modernising agendas of Tony Blair and New Labour, still with us today. One of my most vivid memories of dialogue with Cora is from the early days of Thatcher’s election when we were travelling back from some conference or feminist event and she expressed her anxiety that the new ...”

“... on the electorate’s view of the government. This is a persistent error of modern politics. Blair spent much of his premiership devising ways in which the Tories could be made to look ‘soft’ on crime, terror and all the rest on the understanding that this was an election-winner for Labour. But there is no historical evidence that any British ...”

“... Stillness and Speed: My Story by Dennis Bergkamp (Arsenal striker, 1995-2006); Addicted by Tony Adams (Arsenal centre-back, 1983-2002); and, now, Arsène Wenger’s My Life in Red and White. Arsène Wenger on the touchline at the Emirates Stadium, 29 March 2014. The Premier League has come a long way since it started nearly thirty years ...”

“... analysts: no matter what folly led the US into battle, ‘victory is the only exit strategy.’ Tony Blair has cast the dilemma in apocalyptic terms: the world must do something, or do nothing. This misrepresents the situation on three counts. First, it is not the world but Nato that is acting. Secondly, his framing of the ethical quandary fails to ask ...”

“... order a kipper while thinking about his ‘potted version of Montesquieu’. There’s a bit about Tony Blair wanting to ban the use of calculators in Britain’s primary schools. And yet, Destiny is, like its predecessor, a curiously blighted book, though in a subliminal, difficult-to-place way. Bits of it, like the idea about the models, are ...”

“... is not what it was. The process of opening the NHS to private sector investment began under Tony Blair and has been exploited by successive Conservative governments. If all goes to plan – and any hope that it won’t is fading fast – the collapse will come soon, and mainly American firms will finally get their hands on a chunk of capital that ...”

“... themes and media and sites and forms of attention have been emulsified into a phenomenon on which Tony Blair smiles. Stallabrass follows the tracks of this social monster, which can be identified by what seems to be an infinitely elastic, numbing permissiveness, from mannikins of children with penises for noses and vulvae for mouths to used sanitary ...”

“... only question is, will other countries support this latest initiative by the United States? Before Tony Blair decides, he should consider the negative consequences. A broad right of anticipatory self-defence would introduce dangerous uncertainties. Who would decide that a potential threat justifies pre-emptive action? How does one protect against ...”

“... and Labour voters excited, the SNP keeps agitating for the devolution of yet more fiscal powers. Tony Blair has – accurately enough – described the SNP as ‘a government that’s allowed to behave like an opposition’, though this doesn’t quite capture the party’s apparent bewitchment of an ostensibly pro-Union electorate. The SNP functions ...”

“... until command finds a need for it as justification for political policy.’ The phantom of Tony Blair, brandishing his dodgy dossier, shimmers into sight. Tree of Smoke puts the Vietnam War more explicitly in the context of the wars that went before it. The defining moments of the colonel’s life were his capture by the Japanese in Burma in ...”