“... Tony Blair (called to the Bar 1976) wanted to ‘derail the gravy train of legal aid’ and Jack Straw (called to the Bar 1972) complained of ‘BMW-driving civil liberties lawyers’. But New Labour’s attack wasn’t on the gravy train: it was on the ‘good’ lawyers, the ones who earn £25,000 a year helping the poorest, and the ones who ...”

“... danger of paying . . . the massive legal costs that would ratchet up against them.’ In 1995 Jack Straw described prison privatisation as ‘morally repugnant’ and said: ‘It is not appropriate for people to profit out of incarceration. This is surely one area where the free market does not exist.’ Shortly after taking office he gave the ...”

“... hair, intent on a game of billiards. They are Africans. And here are twenty-odd white men, in straw boaters, surrounding a prone crocodile. Joblard, Sinclair’s friend, arranges the cards so that they tell a story. At once they become scrutable: they are images of imperialism. Joblard titles this picture story, what else, ‘Heart of Darkness’. But the ...”

“... across stream, a green infanta hawthorn in a clearing; another dwarfed and crazy as a green Jack Frost, insect thin trees, lion mane one whose lower branches show hands sunlit from windows. As many shapes as among shifting clouds: fists and sparklers and fingers and fleurs de lys and candles and fans and umbrella spokes and florid gestures and ...”

“... Finally, I managed to persuade the foreign ministers of France and Britain, Hubert Védrine and Jack Straw, to take me on their plane as they make a joint tour of four African countries – the DRC, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda – and to drop me off in Kigali. Though it means they have to give up a seat for a reporter covering their entente cordiale, they ...”

“... They are combative on this point, and so united that they frequently refer to themselves as ‘Jack&Ian’. To this winsome dyad the notion of astrobiology is limiting in that it stands for astronomy as seen from Earth plus Earth-style biology, so that its thinking is governed by anthropic concerns such as the search for ‘habitable zones’ elsewhere in ...”

“... Murray records his astonishment on being recalled to London to be told that the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, and Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, had decided that in the ‘War on Terror’ we should, as a matter of policy, use intelligence obtained through torture by foreign intelligence services. A follow-up memo from a Foreign Office legal ...”

“... it even when I was a part of it.16 March. One of the lowest moments this year was Tony Blair and Jack Straw misrepresenting the French and German position on Iraq in order to encourage xenophobia and get more support from the Murdoch papers.17 March. A bin Laden associate reported as being ‘quizzed’ by American agents in Pakistan. Were suspects ...”

“... of Parliament as the grand inquisitor of the nation seemed to be slipping. By 1995, the Labour MP Jack Straw was lamenting that ‘in the last six years, every serious newspaper has abandoned its straight reporting of Parliament.’ Almost overnight, a tradition that dated back to the Victorian era of devoting a page or more every day to coverage of the ...”

“... of its resources and surveillance time monitoring such well-known left-wing subversives as Jack Straw and Peter Mandelson, as well as CND and Vietnam War protesters. More important, from a counter-terrorist perspective, it was deeply involved in the British state’s confrontation with modern Irish Republican terrorism. Until 1992, the Met Special ...”

“... submitted their own short list of who they wished to see chair the Inquiry but the Home Secretary Jack Straw settled on his own man, Sir William Macpherson of Cluny, a retired High Court Judge. He was to be supported by John Sentamu, the Anglican Bishop of Stepney, Tom Cook, former Deputy Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, and Richard Stone, Chairman of ...”

“... of current political practices. He had the ear of Robin Cook and is now said to have the ear of Jack Straw (though Tony Blair, typically, blows hot and cold). In The Post-Modern State and the World Order, Cooper divides the world up into pre-modern, modern and post-modern states. Pre-modern states attempt, and for the most part fail, to rule those ...”

“... the cabinet and outside it ready to help the prime minister along. And so much nodding, and from Jack Straw in particular, still nodding on the front bench today like a dog in the back window of a Fiesta. The newspapers fall for Butler’s smooth speaking even when they know how specious it is. One of his predecessors as master of University ...”

“... of British sailors lined up on the decks, in their crisp white uniforms, saluting the Union Jack, and apparently experienced some kind of Anglophile epiphany, from which he has not yet recovered. This story has often been related in the press here, but when I repeated it in Egypt people laughed. Mohamed, they said, may well have visited the docks and ...”

“... to American so-called justice. Jacqui Smith, the vibrant successor to such champions of liberty as Jack Straw, David Blunkett and John Reid, is potentially a bigger threat to our freedoms than Abu Hamza has ever been. ITV News reports all this as ‘Britain has won the right to extradite Abu Hamza.’ Translated this means Britain has lost the right not ...”