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“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... those blue eyes. But then he had an attack of wind, gave her time to recover.’ Moore also quotes Tony Blair, who was sitting in the chamber as a young MP, taking note: ‘It needed a scalpel. All she got from Neil was a rather floppy baseball bat.’ Once it was clear she had escaped, Heseltine and Brittan each made mildly grudging statements of apology ...”

“... policies were more prescriptive than libertarian: an awkward inheritance that encumbered Tony Blair’s government from the start. When Labour returned to office in 1997 education (as we were repeatedly told) was to be central to its programme. Though the rapid growth in the number of comprehensives had given England a closer approximation to a ...”

“... If we allow that the Party does wish to enact the Report in something like its present form, a Blair government will face other major constraints. The Report will be costly and almost certainly demands an economy which is already strong or else an electorate which is prepared to accept longer-term cuts in private consumption. But the British economy is ...”

“... give incentives to motivate the self-interest.’Letwin and Redwood’s ideas also had traction in Tony Blair’s 1997 National Health Service Act. Together, the 1990 and 1997 Acts turned NHS hospitals into trusts able to operate as commercial businesses. Many formed Private Finance Initiative partnerships to build and maintain hospitals – these ...”

“... set to be removed again. But Keir Starmer and his soon-to-be chancellor, Rachel Reeves, are, like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the children of their political moment. Blair and Brown, for all their achievements, continued to inhabit the house that Thatcher built. Starmer and Reeves, with their aversion to tax rises and ...”