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“... Even in December 1997, at the supposed nadir of the Windsor clan’s popularity, and the zenith of Tony Blair’s, the Prime Minister’s approval rating in a MORI poll was, at 61 per cent, the same as that for Prince Charles, detested ex-spouse of the Althorp Madonna and prime scapegoat for her death. Even immediately after the Paris shunt, a mere 18 per ...”

“... press conference; at a meeting of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign; at the laying to rest of Tony Banks. Some of these entries are inadvertently comical. Writing of Ralph Miliband’s funeral at Golders Green Crematorium in 1994, Benn notes: ‘Anyone on the real left of any significance was there. Jeremy Corbyn couldn’t make it.’ For the most ...”

“... Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order (1978), written in collaboration with Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke and Brian Roberts, but with its great and terrifying sweeps of synthesis – not to mention their calm, dry, paddingly Socratic delivery – commonly assumed to be the work mainly of Hall. Everywhere the ‘moral and intellectual ...”

“... Jocelyn has known or worked with. There is music that has been specially composed, a poem by Tony Harrison, the theme of which is all the toasts he and Jocelyn have drunk together in all the various places where they have worked around the world. They’re due to set off on Monday on another epic journey, the script, based on the Prometheus legend, is ...”

“... policy. His very presence questions the special relationship with the US that under Thatcher and Blair became the equivalent, in the phrase coined by John Lanchester, of the ‘“coital lock” which makes it impossible to separate dogs during sex’. Hence the absurd question relating to nuclear buttons that TV journalists are now putting to Corbyn’s ...”

“... last, of course they want to be rid of the weak and wily Major, of course they would prefer to see Blair as prime minister. But this is the politics of pis aller, the grim strategy of the better ’ole, the weary realism of second-best options. The point hardly needs labouring that the old-time religion of socialism, which was good enough for generations of ...”

“... start doing the rounds on social media. It’s a clip a couple of minutes long from a speech by Tony Benn in the House of Commons in 1998, back in the distant days of New Labour, of which he was a frequent critic. Tony Blair’s government was seeking parliamentary approval to ‘use all necessary means’ against ...”

“... it was Dole who proposed a tax cut, risking a deficit increase to stimulate growth. In Europe, Tony Blair is only the most blatant among today’s party leaders of the left in his disdain for poor people and other losers, his overwhelming desire to sup at the table of financial success, and his contempt for the broad mass of working stiffs with small ...”

“... this would not have struck American public opinion as a plausible casus belli. (Did anyone tell Tony Blair about the Syrian objective?) After the toppling of Saddam’s statues in Baghdad in April, however, the Bush Administration turned its attention to perhaps the real objective of the war: Syria. With American forces in Baghdad, Perle continued his ...”

“... last years in power. Showered with accolades – ‘the smartest leader I think I ever met’ (Tony Blair); ‘none is more impressive’ (George H.W. Bush) – his rule became erratic. He was frustrated by the absence of a spirit of entrepreneurship among his people and as a solution, proposed a eugenics campaign. The migrant working-class population ...”

“... atmosphere reflected national reactions as a whole. There was none of the jubilation surrounding Blair’s arrival in Downing Street, however forced much of that may have been. The election campaign itself was in part responsible for the absence of excitement. Avoiding any sharp challenges or radical commitments, Gerhard Schröder promised no more than a ...”

“... and appreciation of modern writers in that language as well as in the Classical tongues. Hugh Blair, a Church of Scotland minister who from 1762 became Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at Edinburgh University, was in effect the world’s first Professor of English Literature. He built his lectures on Smith’s work. Smith held that ‘we in this ...”

“... without being beholden to it. From Macmillan to Wilson to Heath to Thatcher to Major to Blair to Cameron, a succession of prime ministers persuaded themselves that their country was somehow different from the rest: it could pick and choose from the menu of European options in the way that suited it best. They were all mistaken. Some picking and ...”

“... of which, Sequence, he co-founded with Lindsay Anderson and Gavin Lambert. Along with Anderson and Tony Richardson, Reisz aimed to bring a version of auteurism to British film, and they did as much with the documentary movement Free Cinema. In 1959, Reisz directed We Are the Lambeth Boys, and he made his first feature film a year later, Saturday Night and ...”

“... competition and the bottom line? In fact, as Leys and Player show, it was the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown that began replacing the public components of the NHS with private ones, the effect concealed by large spending increases, long before Lansley and Cameron took charge. If the Conservatives and their Liberal allies are dismantling ...”