“... MacMillan triumphed with that earlier volume, an unexpected bestseller that was praised by Tony Blair as ‘a fascinating piece of history’. Peacemakers is a brilliantly vivid study, which succeeds remarkably in evoking procedures and arguments that might well have seemed exhausting, remote and dry as dust. It also made clear that MacMillan is ...”

“... was the prospectus for New Labour’s blend of social and economic liberalism so clearly stated. Blair himself argued there for the ‘Third Way’ and the imperatives of ‘modernisation’. In August 2002, a few months after Blair became a proselytiser for Bush’s global war on terror, Goodhart wrote that ...”

“... journalism that surrounds his presidency and their marriage: There was no end to it … [Blair] cited a New Yorker essay full of barbed quotes about Hillary from [Sally] Quinn and Elizabeth Dole, the senator’s wife, plus a popular new novel about the 1992 election, Primary Colors. All she knew of that book, said Hillary, was that she cussed like a ...”

“... a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given’. I heard Tony Blair say: ‘We are asked to accept Saddam decided to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd.’ I heard the president say: ‘We know that Iraq and al-Qaida have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. We’ve learned ...”

“... put on disability benefits. I had more money, until my father died. Labour were back in power but Tony Blair seemed to like Margaret Thatcher. He didn’t end the persecution even though I voted for him. When he came to Reading he got a standing ovation from everyone except me. I’d given up going to the Commons, having seen Tam Dalyell just once and ...”

“... for Price, a former BBC political correspondent who worked as deputy communications director for Tony Blair. Modi usually keeps his distance from the media and particularly from organisations or individuals seen as liberal-inclined and unsympathetic, but eight weeks after his swearing-in, Price was ushered into Race Course Road for the first of four ...”

“... by raising the case of Jaballa Matar with Gaddafi (Desmond Tutu, by contrast, did his bit). Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson are fingered too, for cosying up to the Libyans, and though David Miliband was full of goodwill, a meeting at his office ended in Seif-like smarminess. Miliband placed a hand on Matar’s shoulder and asked: ‘Are you British ...”

“... produced by Gerhard Richter during the same period. In a very late painting, Hamilton presented Tony Blair as a Wild West cowboy, and he left a project concerning the Occupied Territories unfinished at his death. A Polaroid self-portrait (1973) In the end Hamilton was animated by this tension above all: even as he embraced the postwar world of ...”

“... Chamchamal. They wouldn’t be much of a match for the Republican Guard. As I write, we wait for Tony Blair to publish his ‘dossier’ – that is, to reveal the evidence for Saddam’s terrorist links and his non-conventional weapons capacity. No doubt we won’t have to wait much beyond that to see the B-52s back in action over the hills south of ...”

“... painful to him. By 1995 not only had he ceased to be a Party supporter, but several meetings with Tony Blair had convinced him that New Labour deserved to form the next Government. This was not something he could reveal to Black without resigning his editorship, but neither could he conceal it for very long with a general election not far ...”

“... Britain two years ago, police vans lined the streets to hide Free Tibet protestors from him; Tony Blair chose to talk trade rather than human rights. In January 1995, about a year after she had first met the Dalai Lama, Hilton received an early-morning phone call from his secretary, asking her to come to McLeod Ganj as soon as possible. She arrived ...”

“... extraordinarily graceful exits from power have protected the United States from a Napoleon (or a Tony Blair) and will ensure that the second George W. will leave the White House in January 2009. But the desire felt by Americans in the 21st century to imagine their history as an unbroken enterprise – to touch Lincoln’s mystic chords of memory and ...”

“... but condemned by Ali as a representative of ‘the extreme centre’, along with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. A near rant from 2011 reprinted here describes them as ‘hollow men who rule over a hollow system where money overpowers all and the much maligned state is used mainly to preserve the financial status quo and fund the wars’. He goes ...”

“... in the same paper. By 2001, Ballard was training a Baudrillardian gaze on the hostilities between Tony Blair and William Hague: ‘Is the election actually taking place?’ This might be impish behaviour, but it’s impishness of a decidedly egg-headed sort, and it’s no surprise that in the latter stages of his career Ballard emerged as a pin-up of the ...”

“... with any ethics. Are all your powers to be realised? What about that obsessive desire to beat up Tony Blair? Or should one realise only those impulses that spring from the authentic core of the self? But by what criteria do we judge this? What if my self-realisation clashes with yours? And why should all-round expression beat devoting oneself to a ...”