“... modernising despots, insisted as late as 2008.Inspired by Thatcher and right-wing US think tanks, Tony Blair pushed state policy and public attitudes in Britain closer to the notion that welfare is a problem rather than the solution. Over the last decade, successive Conservative governments have ruthlessly shredded what was left of the social safety net ...”

“... the Queen and Gordon Brown before having a cheering conscience-free get-together with his old mate Tony Blair. And here are the helicopters flying over Regent’s Park to prove it. 26 June, Espiessac. I sit in the wicker rocking-chair in the shade of the willow by the pool. Except that I’m slightly pestered by insects it’s an ideal situation, with the ...”

“... expensive ways for Labour not to think about this reality. The elections also provoked another of Tony Blair’s near-weekly ‘rare interventions’ in British politics, with a smattering of TV interviews based on an essay in the New Statesman. Blair’s retainers dutifully lauded the essay: David Miliband, the king ...”

“... belong to a tradition that stretches back to Labour’s beginnings (this could never be said of Tony Blair’s). Those who adopt this view would do better just to come out with what they actually mean, which is that it was only in the 1990s, under Blair, that the Labour Party finally found its perfect form. But it ...”

“... up and down as the heavyweight arm-twisting pays off, the celebrity assaults, camera-kissing by Blair and Beckham: we get the Games on 6 July 2005. Then the shock of a traumatised London the following morning, death toll rising, dazed survivors captured on mobile phones as they stumble through smoke-filled, soft-focus tunnels. Bomb carriers looped on ...”

“... described her as ‘the most ignorant politician of her level that I’d come across until I met Tony Blair’, but he thought she was at least touchingly aware of her ignorance, ‘the eternal scholarship girl’. He summed it up by saying: ‘I always liked her, but she always bored me a bit.’ Being boring is a sin for an intellectual. But it is not ...”

“... a veteran of the 1974 debacle, performed a series of craven contortions as he compliantly followed Tony Blair’s mazy hesitations on devolution. Blair was an instinctive centraliser and control freak, who breezily likened the projected Scottish Parliament to an English parish council, yet in his early years as party ...”

“... Service it’s a more useful investment of public money than any number of state visits, or, in Blair’s case, holidays with Berlusconi (who, incidentally, I never hear mentioned throughout). 29 January, Rome. Seduced by its name, first thing this morning we go to look at Nero’s Golden House, or such parts of it as have been excavated. It’s a ...”

“... to read the signs, the measured droop of Lord Bragg’s handkerchief, the precise organisation of Tony Blair’s latest consensus hair policy, Lord Archer’s ironic, pre-penitentiary crop, the way Andrew Motion carries off his loden coat as he swirls between taxi and station platform. Julian Barnes’s novels are depilated at source, fat-free. Frisking ...”

“... a sweeping economic and political platform for Labour, has been elaborated with the help of Tony Blair’s adviser, David Miliband, and sees Blair’s election as leader as an epochal event, finally settling Labour’s commitment to social democracy. All of which sounds very much as if Hutton hopes to become a ...”

“... to see the government, which is ‘stuffed for money like everyone else’, change: ‘To be fair, Tony Blair might have bankrupted us but he was certainly no enemy of people like me in the way that Miliband might ...”

“... At 18 or 19, most university students modulate their voices to fit in with their new surroundings (Tony Blair learned to talk in Estuary when he was deep into his forties). Yet Entwistle, an instinctive mimic in every other aspect of life, an internet chameleon, an earnest social climber, had not managed to retrieve a single missing aitch or shorten one ...”

“... came on the Trans-Siberian railway), to save the world as we know it. ‘If we fail at Kyoto,’ Tony Blair said, ‘we fail our children, because the consequences will be felt in their lifetime.’ John Prescott arrived in person to stiff-arm any opposition; other political heavies followed. Clinton lobbied Argentina and Brazil by phone. The troubling ...”

“... twenty-five years left. The great buzz-phrase in April’s world is ‘renewable energies’ – Tony Blair loved to hear himself say it – and the people at Calvert feel good about the electricity they are able to produce by harvesting the methane gas created by the buried rubbish on their site. ‘We have the capacity to produce 17 ...”

“... lip-service at least, from across the political spectrum. ‘The Britain of the elite is over,’ Tony Blair proclaimed on taking office in 1997. ‘The new Britain is a meritocracy where we break down the barriers of class, religion, race and culture.’ Like so much New Labour discourse, this strikes the upbeat note of a motivational talk, while the ...”