“... on neoliberal lines – should be copied all over Europe. Ronald Reagan did it, Thatcher and Tony Blair did it, Germany did it – so why can’t François Hollande do it? The fact that the global bank disaster scarcely touched Germany, with its strictly controlled banking system, means that its politicians, from Merkel to Steinbrück, don’t ...”

“... this chap can speak to billions of people simultaneously, which is rather like wondering why, if Tony Blair is an octopus, he has only two arms. For Judeo-Christianity, God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or ‘existent’: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious ...”

“... since 1972 to the law of the European Union. It goes on: In 1997, the Labour government under Tony Blair started introducing significant constitutional reforms. They include a process of devolution, i.e. devolving certain areas of government to Scotland and Wales (following the referendums, a separate Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly were ...”

“... a normal British life. He graduated from university and got a job at HSBC. In 1997 he voted for Tony Blair. After marrying Faye, he thought he had flushed out all extremist thoughts. But when he watched the attacks of 11 September 2001, he says ‘a part of me was joyful.’ At a Sufi gathering that evening, he asked what they would be doing to ...”

“... candidate for president of the European Commission (supported by France and Germany, but vetoed by Tony Blair). Today, he leads the liberal party group in the European Parliament. Known for his brash rhetoric, he lays into right-wing leaders, justly accusing Viktor Orbán, for instance, of accepting the EU’s money but not its values. He has it in for ...”

“... by liberals. Liberals didn’t need to show much conviction, at least until it was too late. As Tony Blair put it in his 2005 conference speech: ‘I hear people say we have to stop and debate globalisation. You might as well debate whether autumn should follow summer.’The forces that coalesced around the 2016 referendum had been gathering strength ...”

“... had nearly trebled, and the number of degrees had increased by a factor of five. In 1999 Tony Blair vowed that the 33 per cent of school-leavers then in higher education would rise to 50 per cent in the next century, a goal that was reached in 2018.Widening opportunity in education is the noblest of social and political projects. But the cost is ...”

“... behind this grand attempt, as the US and Britain put it, to ‘modernise’ the country. Cherie Blair and Laura Bush said it was a war for women’s liberation. If it had been, it would have been the first in history. We now know what it really was: a crude war of revenge which failed because the occupation strengthened those it sought to destroy. The war ...”

“... At a Downing Street meeting in November 2002 attended by Tony Blair, Jack Straw and six academics familiar with Iraq and the Middle East, two things became clear. The first was that Straw thought post-Saddam Iraq would be much like post-Soviet Russia and could thus be easily pigeonholed as that strange creature, a ‘transitional society ...”

“... testimony from defectors, including Saddam’s own son-in-law.’ At Camp David on 7 September, Tony Blair said proof of a genuine nuclear threat had come in ‘the report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) this morning, showing what has been going on at the former nuclear weapon sites’. Saddam had killed his son-in-law Hussein Kamel ...”

“... and permits a president to pardon himself, should we understand the same rule to apply here? If Tony Blair had been charged with selling honours for cash, could he (or John Reid, or Jacqui Smith, or whoever was home secretary at the time) have procured the grant of a pardon in the name of the queen? I can’t think any British lawyer would give an ...”

“... People’s Direct Action Network threw red paint over the gates of Downing Street, calling it ‘Blair’s blood’. Labour’s reforms advanced slowly, in the face of backbench rebellions and efficient campaigning by activists. The government began by introducing means testing and stricter assessments, outsourced to the Anglo-French IT company Sema ...”

“... of people. After the United States, which was blamed for propping up the Colonels, Britain and Tony Blair were 17N’s principal targets, for supporting the Nato bombing of Serbia. Curiously enough, as Michael Llewellyn Smith, a former British ambassador, reports in Athens: A Cultural and Literary History, the young ...”

“... of the Regions’, not a few cries of alarm will be raised. The real question, as ever, is what Blair wants. He began at a cracking pace in 1999, by setting up Regional Development Agencies and non-elected Regional Chambers throughout England. Then all went very quiet, and what if anything happens next remains uncertain. Perhaps in this, as in other ...”

“... the behaviour of his predecessor in the run-up to the Iraq War; and the best-known Mark Fisher was Tony Blair’s former arts minister, the Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central – it had recently been revealed in the local paper that he’d claimed parliamentary expenses for items including a face-painting set, a packet of Fun Chunky Crayons and two ...”