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“... beat and racy words, but because of the singers’ lifestyle. And beware of politicians (like Tony Blair and Bill Clinton) who play musical instruments. Contemporary readers would be sensitive to the political aspects of Plato’s decision. Athenian tragedy and comedy were intensely democratic institutions, not only in the way they were ...”

“... Laws states unequivocally that Labour and the Lib Dems could have come together at any time during Blair’s years in office, and there is a strong undercurrent of regret that Tony wasn’t around to make things easier for them in 2010 (Ashdown tries to get Blair involved from the Middle ...”

“... treatment of Jenkins and Rodgers will also seem extraordinarily kind to those who remember some of Tony Crosland’s or even Jim Callaghan’s remarks, but Owen is beyond saving, even for Crewe and King. From the moment he is introduced – ‘a tendency to begin by arguing passionately on one side of an issue and to wind up arguing equally passionately on the ...”

“... of British politics – from Enoch Powell, who was by then, scarier still, an Ulster Unionist, to Tony Benn and Michael Foot. With a sly coyness that sits oddly with her later reputation, the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher, operated, like Wilson, on the sidelines of the Yes campaign. The result, in a notionally divided ...”

“... of the mujahideen seriously,’ the speaker continues. ‘Do not listen to the liars Bush and Blair who say that al-Qaida is finished. We are not spokespersons for al-Qaida but we pray in the same direction.’ I notice, at the back of the hall, two men in suits who are not journalists, though one of them holds a notebook. They listen attentively. An ...”

“... Commonwealth countries are richer for their presence.’This was originally written to be read by Tony Blair on a video-link at a commemoration of the Great Famine, funded in part by the Irish Government, which was held in Cork on the June Bank Holiday weekend of 1997, but the plan was abandoned and the apology was read out by the actor Gabriel Byrne. It ...”

“... a possible counterweight to England’s hegemony in the Union. Weight expresses some sympathy for Tony Blair’s efforts to rebrand Britain and kickstart a progressive patriotism (he neglects to mention the memorably awful appearance of Fritz the bulldog in one of Labour’s 1997 election broadcasts). ‘Cool Britannia’ was crass, he says, but well ...”

“... salaries and approaching retirement, can be expected to show more resilience on this issue than Tony Blair’s government did when dealing with the ageing Pinochet. They might even grant Milosevic his wish and call Blair and other Nato leaders as witnesses – an order they might have to obey, since the Yugoslav ...”

“... for a boutique-hotel jolly for senior staff. The school was ‘a wonderful inspiration’, Tony Blair had said in 2006, and whatever her errors, Shuter talked to the Today programme in March with exemplary tact about her former pupil Mohammed Emwazi, who’d just been identified as ‘Jihadi John’. Shuter has the right to apply for a rethink on ...”

“... fifth a titled woman, sister to a Cabinet Minister. The principal males, Martin Murray and Gavin Blair Summers, are, Binding informs us, modelled on Stephen Spender and Giles Romilly. Fellow Travellers thinly fictionalises a passage in Spender’s life which he has himself recollected in World within World. In 1933, the poet (in the novel a novelist) became ...”

“... Etienne, which has a capacity of 38,000, there will be a paltry two thousand Scottish supporters. Tony Banks has called the French hosts ‘miserly’, and 22 Liberal Democrat MPs have signed a motion condemning the French authorities. A few more tickets have become available thanks to a contingency fund. While Blair has ...”

“... for reassurance about the wonders of male normalcy. They look for all this in the way people like Tony Parsons have taught them, in a spirit of soft-core irony and hard-core sentiment. But apart from reassurance and a sort of avenging pride, what are these magazines selling to their readers? With their grisly combinations of sensitivity and debasement ...”

“... working for the BBC who couldn’t be public, but we can name them now – Ken Trodd, Ken Loach, Tony Garnett, John McGrath. You know, from the cultural milieu. There was Clive, Fred Halliday, later Sheila Rowbotham got involved, and Roger Smith, script editor at the BBC. The French May erupted as we were about to launch the first issue, which had come out ...”

“... and become more like the electoral machines of their leaders, as is largely the case in America. Tony Blair’s celebrated ‘project’, guided by Philip Gould, dismantled the rambling institutions that formed the Labour coalition and turned Labour into whatever the leader wanted it to be, even, in Blair’s case, a ...”

“... been shaped by three factors: the big budget increases it received under the Labour government of Tony Blair in the early 2000s, rescuing the service from 18 years of Conservative neglect and, at the cost of some ruinous public-private mortgages, covering the land with shiny new hospitals; the steady increase in the role of profit-making firms as NHS ...”