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“... one time gave currency to this misconceived figure, but for the past few years the Government’s White Papers have adopted a corrected basis more in line with, though still a little wider than, the definitions used by the OECD. On this basis, public expenditure last year was 42 per cent of GDP at market prices. This point does not, however, materially affect ...”

“... of the educated Sipping wine, attentive between courses – See the applause fluttering from their white hands Like so many messy table napkins. The poem’s skill is part of its predicament. It raises a question that has preoccupied not only writers from Britain’s former colonies, but many of Britain’s native writers. How can a literary art, with its ...”

“... attempts he met defeat. Clearly it is the SDP connection Which has supplied the upsurge of white heat That melts the Tory vote to a minority And Labour’s to abject inferiority. This Pitt falls far short of so grand a name. Long in the beard, he’s less so in the legs. He lacks the stature for his sudden fame. It’s plain that of the Pitts he is the ...”

“... She bared all about self-harm and her frequent calls, during her bulimic phase, on the great white telephone. She fondled children and animals, dabbled in New Age pursuits, kibitzed in operating theatres and had been stiffed on a pedalo by the thick-set offspring of a Levantine grocer. In op-ed fable she presented the Windsor family’s lone human ...”

“... UK to a policy of regime change. In April 2002, at a meeting at George W. Bush’s ranch in Texas, Tony Blair ‘sought a partnership’ with Bush and argued for ‘an ultimatum calling on Iraq to permit the return of weapon inspectors or face the consequences’. In July Blair told the president: ‘I will be with you, whatever.’ In September he and the ...”

“... the Association of Business Sponsorship of the Arts, which was founded in 1976 by, among others, Tony Garrett, chairman of Imperial Tobacco. For all this hectic lobbying and slush, tobacco has lost a little of its pulling power in Britain and America since its peak in 1973. It has responded with relish by concentrating more and more on selling its poison in ...”

“... of character have been influenced by Lady Falkender’s guide and mentor. In seeking to assess Tony Benn’s potential as a future Labour prime minister, she writes that his fantasy concerns the rule of the ordinary man but an ordinary man transformed into a superhuman of sparkling intelligence, total integrity and overflowing love and kindness. How that ...”

“... Masturbator. Dali showed us a postcard of one of the colonies in Africa. Natives in front of a big white tent, leaning, sitting, lying, etc. It was a horizontal photo. When he turned it vertically what we saw was the large head of a woman – the tent was her chin, the figures her features. The double image. This is how Alfred and I got the idea of the double ...”

“... word. ‘Feeling profound or vehement’ is reserved for those who wish to change society – for Tony Benn, the ‘Race Relations Industry’, the sexologist, the prison reformer, the militant trade-unionist. Whatever is, is right, unless it’s Left. Humour also is often wary, and frequently contemptuous, of all tender emotions. The quickest way into ...”

“... the rightness of what you are saying or selling. Mr Wainwright is correct; it does resemble one of Tony Blair’s techniques: the Prime Minister’s wide-eyed defence of his Party in the Ecclestone business, for instance. By interposing his own reassuring image between the band and the public, Branson was able to take on the Sex Pistols (after they had been ...”

“... 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 letter.) The ...”

“... object of Michael’s affections complains that he’s ‘too dogmatic’, too ‘black and white’), while the tragi-farcical ending collapses the different levels of reality in a surprising and effective way. In The House of Sleep, on the other hand, a kinky, right-wing mad scientist rubs shoulders with more plausible cast members for no particular ...”

“... 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 deputy ...”

“... unable to spot the cop in their midst. True Romance, Tarantino’s first script, directed by Tony Scott and released in 1993, has a big drug deal that ends in a massacre because too many people show up at the party. There is a marvellous three-way stand-off here – drug-buyer’s bodyguards against cops against Mafia – which is repeated in Reservoir ...”

“... Punk rockers looked ugly, partly because, being ill-favoured, gangly and for the most part poor-white geeks, they were to the manner born, and partly because they wanted to. They sounded ugly, partly because not many could play their instruments very well, partly because they were out of their heads most of the time, but mostly because they wanted to. The ...”