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“... heads.’ The Mancunian music scene will never become completely domesticated, however many times Tony Blair invites Noel Gallagher to Downing Street. But it could be hollowed out by London. Haslam DJs down there now. Gallagher drinks in Islington pubs. Morrissey of the Smiths, once a wanderer in crumbling Manchester cemeteries, bought a creamy villa ...”

“... day the British press in one way or another trumpets the marvels of imminently online Britain. Tony Blair has decreed that, by the turn of the century, all Britain’s schoolchildren will be linked in a ‘national grid of learning’. It’s not evident that he or David Blunkett knows precisely what they mean by this feeble echo of Al Gore’s ...”

“... bigotry and extremism’ that he ‘has no business at Number Ten’ and that Tony Blair should remember to have a sick bag at the ready. He has been written off a thousand times, told that if Sinn Féin doesn’t repudiate the IRA he’ll be finished, warned that his supporters are fed up and about to desert him. Sharrock and ...”

“... European affairs – following events in Britain, for example, closely enough to be an adviser to Tony Blair, though not quite closely enough to have had second thoughts about the wisdom of letting this fact be trumpeted in the publicity material for his book. He writes fast-moving, even breathless prose: chapter headings like ‘The Age of the Terrific ...”

“... leaders dominated and defined the political culture of the mid-1970s. It’s hard to conceive of Tony Blair launching his career by defending the Angry Brigade. Despite having planted bombs at the homes of leading Conservative ministers (and the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police), the Angries have received little mainstream historical ...”

“... Labour Government was no more inclined than the Tories to offend the newspaper bosses. After all Tony Blair had gone halfway round the world before the 1997 election to reach a concordat with Rupert Murdoch. The only effective way to regulate the press would be to adopt all the recommendations of Calcutt’s second report, enshrine them in law and ...”

“... ambitious. In a moment which anticipated the notorious Granita conversation of 1994 between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, he told Stafford Cripps that ‘any time you wish it I shall always be ready to retire in your favour.’ As Bew remarks, ‘That conversation hung in the air for a number of years.’ For, when the ailing and assailed Lansbury ...”

“... including Banner, 2007 was a missed opportunity: activities centred on celebrating Wilberforce and Tony Blair refused to offer a state apology. His government did, however, make a statement expressing ‘deep sorrow’ over the slave trade and recognised it as a crime against humanity. The Heritage Lottery Fund gave grants to 285 projects marking the ...”

“... the way healthcare in Britain should be funded that personal hypocrisy is not much of an issue. Tony Blair may not be able to bring himself to educate his children in the comprehensive system that has to suffice for most parents, but when it comes to health he is happy to take his chances with the NHS (knowing, of course, that he will be well looked ...”

“... though it was their regimes that broke the link between the state and welfare. George W. Bush and Tony Blair are ‘among the first market-state political leaders’, even though one of them still talks as though the state can make provision for a kind of social security through its public services. That is all froth. Deep down they speak the same ...”

“... was right and if I didn’t get the result I wanted, well that’s the voters’ right too. Tony Blair, on the publication of the Chilcot Report, expressed regret for some of the mistakes made in planning for the Iraq War (mistakes, by implication, made by others). But he could not regret the war itself and his decision to launch it. How could ...”

“... political threat neutered. In 1994, the year of Loaded’s first issue and Oasis’s first album, Tony Blair took over the Labour Party and immediately rewrote ‘Clause Four’ of its constitution, which had until then committed the party to public ownership of industry. ‘Cool Britannia’, Britpop and lad mags notably looked back to the 1960s for ...”

“... tasked Davies with drawing up plans for devolution in Wales. Smith was a true believer, unlike Tony Blair. But Blair inherited fully formed plans for devolution in Scotland and Wales when he became leader in 1994, and Smith’s commitment to hold referendums went into the manifesto. They took place shortly after ...”

“... which attracted some attention during l’affaire Lewinsky; the author of newspaper articles by ‘Tony Blair’. (This last chapter, which seems to have been a bright idea by the British publisher, is a mistake. Is there a single sentient being anywhere in the UK who for a second thinks they were written by anyone other than Alistair Campbell? It would ...”

“... 1960s was one of the many elements of Thatcherism eagerly embraced by New Labour. In July 2004, Tony Blair attacked the era of ‘freedom without responsibility’, which had produced ‘a group of young people who were brought up without parental discipline, without proper role models and without any sense of responsibility to or for others’. He ...”