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“... supply-led food bank?’ another peer wanted to know. Freud wrote the Lex column in the FT before Tony Blair asked him to lead an independent review of the benefits system (he completed a draft in three weeks, despite admitting he ‘didn’t know anything about welfare at all’), so perhaps we should give him the benefit of the doubt. ‘If that ...”

“... and his beleaguered response. At one point his passionate defence of his policies – imagine Tony Blair wiping the floor with Robin Cook on the subject of safety procedures – makes us feel not that he was right but that he was realistic, and if we don’t exactly feel sympathy for him we do feel there’s a dignity amid the smarm. Maybe it’s ...”

“... has of course been deliberately undermining national sovereignty in the name of globalisation. Tony Blair has made this explicit with his talk about the end of the Westphalian order. Meanwhile, many members of minorities, especially the more mobile, professional, middle-class elements, have sought refuge in the West. The resulting diaspora has become ...”

“... the sight of both parties – Labour and Conservatives – rising to their feet to applaud Tony Blair after his last PMQs in 2007?The question in 2019, then, is not whether a ‘centre’ exists but whether political circumstances have once again made ‘centrism’ a viable political strategy. The Independent Group is betting that they ...”

“... system. In 2004 I wrote in this paper (21 October) that a crisis of legitimacy would follow if Tony Blair were returned to power with a big majority on barely a third of the votes of not much more than half the electorate. That is what happened: he won a majority of 66 on a vote share of 35.2 per cent from a turnout of 61.4 per cent, meaning that his ...”

“... revolution was, at the time, chaotic and impulsive, marked by unpredictable contingencies. It was Tony Blair who was able to institutionalise it, or, in Hegel’s terms, to raise (what first appeared as) a contingency, a historical accident, into a necessity. Thatcher wasn’t a Thatcherite, she was merely herself; it was ...”

“... had been dusted off: the MDC was said to be the agent not of P.W. Botha or F.W. de Klerk, but of Tony Blair. Mugabe controlled the rural masses not just by occasional terror but, above all, by the food supply. The peasantry knew that in times of famine, food and seeds were handed out to those with Zanu-PF cards; those without them starved. Such tactics ...”

“... Why is Tony Crosland one of the few Old Labour heroes that nobody mocks? Keir Hardie, G.D.H. Cole, Stafford Cripps, Gaitskell, even Nye Bevan, have become the subject of New Labour locker-room ribaldry. Yet to describe yourself as a ‘Crosland socialist’ still carries meaning. Maybe it is because of that sardonic smile, and an uneasy feeling that, if he were alive today, he would be doing the mocking ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... to remember the importance of living up to his good intentions: Putting Iraq to rights, in Mr Blair’s view, should be the whole world’s business. The more that all nations make common cause to do this, the better. The less this happens, the more vital it is to balance any absence of common cause with a sense of equitable and humanitarian initiatives ...”

“... Their glee is shared by an improbable international coalition of coup supporters, ranging from Tony Blair and David Brooks (who says Egyptians lack even ‘the most basic mental ingredients’ for democracy) to Bashar al-Assad of Syria, the Israeli security establishment and, above all, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which immediately ...”

“... two new fleet carriers to replace the three small Invincible-class ships.This was effected under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and, after many delays and much cost inflation, the navy now has its two super-carriers, the Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales, both equipped with the hugely expensive American F-35 strike aircraft: single-engine planes designed ...”

“... am more or less the same age as George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Gerhard Schröder, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – a pretty crappy generation, when you come to think of it, and many names could be added. It is a generation that grew up in the 1960s in Western Europe or in America, in a world of no hard choices, neither economic nor ...”

“... channel would be delighted to interview the American President or his nominees: Condoleezza Rice, Tony Blair and Colin Powell were allowed unlimited time to explain their point of view. The effect of these broadcasts on Arab public opinion was non-existent. When the bombing of Afghanistan began, al-Jazeera was the only TV network sending out regular ...”

“... never get it,’ our teacher had said a few weeks previously). I was there again in May 2007 when Tony Blair announced he was stepping down as prime minister and leader of the Labour Party. Both times we watched political history live on TV. I don’t recall anything about Cameron’s acceptance speech (telling), but I’ve never forgotten ...”