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“... than MPs, were introduced. These reforms were then put to the test in the famous (or infamous) Benn-Healey contest for the Deputy Leadership. The difficulty was that though the theory of greater democracy and increased accountability of MPs was fine, the practical context in which the theory was operating was fraught with danger. What was missing from the ...”

“... ideas contained in this book may interlock with other ideas on the left, where they belong. Like Tony Benn’s Arguments for Socialism, the book has been too hastily written, is sometimes repetitious, and contains gobbets of former speeches and articles. Given the pressure on their time, it would be a miracle if it were otherwise. Owen’s book is ...”

“... only relation literature as such has to culture as such is that it is part of it,’ wrote Walter Benn Michaels). Warren picks his way through the thickets of this debate with great poise and an ever-alert tact (the book is notable for its patient discriminations, painstaking thinking and nuanced formulations). Like Fishkin and Piersen, Warren is writing ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... to find a leader of note somewhere. Hence this book. ‘Hugh Gaitskell was the grandfather of Tony Blair’s revolution, the original Labour moderniser,’ the blurb begins. With Labour under Blair mobilising for a climactic campaign after 18 years of Tory rule, there is a need to invoke tradition, a legitimate line of descent, especially in view of ...”

“... Now that Tony Blair has almost stopped hanging around the office poisoning the chalice for his inevitable successor, the season for political obituaries is wide open. Not that it hadn’t already started, with a raft of more and less uncharitable interim biographies and Alan Franks, in the Times magazine of 31 March, talking of Blake Morrison’s South of the River coming out ‘just as Blair contemplates his awful decline from resourceful young bushytail to mangy endgame quarry ...”

“... ever more intimate political relationships at the centre of power, even compared to the days when Tony Blair was ruling the country with the aid of his former pupil master and his former flatmate (and perhaps his wife as well). Of course, politics has always been about personal connections and private vendettas, but the current narrowing of the political ...”

“... The face is jowly, bearded, dour, heavily lived-in. The shadowed eyes remind me of photos of Tony Hancock. Comedy, they seem to say, is no laughing matter. It was one of Jonson’s sayings that ‘he would not flatter, though he saw death,’ and his look seems to challenge the artist not to flatter him either. You can see the glisten on his skin from ...”

“... 10 June 1993. Fellow-guests with Tony and Cherie Blair at a BBC dinner. Blair says immediately to my wife: ‘Weren’t you kind enough to ask me to a drinks party for Frank Field’s 50th birthday?’ She answers: ‘Yes, and you neither came nor replied.’ ‘Didn’t I?’ says Blair, and subsequently sends a charming letter of apology ...”

“... increased the importance of the media managers. When the Northern Ireland negotiations got serious Tony Blair took Alistair Campbell into the room with him and insisted that Mo Mowlam remain outside. David Trimble was astonished but that’s how it always is with New Labour. Andrew Rawnsley records how the momentous decision that Britain would not join the ...”

“... the fall of France. When the Marxist-dominated Labour Club split in 1940, he opposed Jenkins and Tony Crosland – ‘more from inertia and indifference than conviction’ – in their move to set up a rival Democratic Socialist Party. It was thus the war which made Healey into a social democrat, instilling the political lesson of planning and an emotional ...”

“... allowed his ministers to take whatever side they preferred in the ensuing campaign, in which Tony Benn from Labour and Enoch Powell from the opposition – he had by then left the Tories and joined the Ulster Unionists – campaigned for a No vote. In June 1975, on a turnout of 64 per cent, two-thirds of those who voted – 67 per cent – approved ...”

“... at raising the minimum wage and protecting the rights of British and foreign workers, Hilary Benn and Co gave credence to the idea that immigration was responsible for the nation’s ills.Could the left have defended a Lexit? The idea was floated by journalists like Owen Jones and Paul Mason in the early days of the campaign. Both quickly retreated when ...”

“... on the Foot, Kinnock, Smith and Blair eras to stand alongside the efforts of Crossman, Castle and Benn (none of whom chose to resign office, though in Benn’s case it remains hard to know why). However guarded Cook’s entries may sometimes be, and despite a few passages that were evidently included for public ...”

“... this was outrageous and he was going to accept the challenge of the Sunday Times. In order to kill Tony Howard’s new job he forbade any of us to speak to him. Uncharacteristically, Crossman did not follow this entry with any comment or aside, and the remainder of the six-year narrative does not include any ‘off the record’ meetings with his ...”