Search Results

“... government up all night is now a thing of the past, thanks in large part to an initiative taken by Tony Blair when he was Labour’s energy spokesman. Faced with a government bill to privatise the electricity industry he identified the three or four major issues he wanted to debate and suggested to the government whips that, if they would allow time for ...”

“... Lord Castlereagh and George Canning can drive from their imagination the more recent feud between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, accounts of which made me thankful there are no firearms stored (within easy reach) at Downing Street. Duels are now fought with shouting matches, spin doctors and snide public allusions to ‘the bloke next door’. The toxic ...”

“... ago, Harald Nesvik, a right-wing member of the Norwegian Parliament, proposed George W. Bush and Tony Blair as candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize, citing their decisive role in the ‘war on terror’. Thus the Orwellian motto ‘War is Peace’ finally becomes reality, and military action against the Taliban can be presented as a way to guarantee the ...”

“... have relished the blackguarding of the civil service which Labour leaders like Harold Wilson and Tony Blair thought it wise to go in for. He was as decent as he was dialectical, and this intervention was a clue to his kindly English patriotism. But it was not the only sort of patriot he was. He was and remained a patriot of the Left, as doesn’t need ...”

“... them speak 55 languages at home and only a third of whom have English as their first language. Tony Blair, an article in the Guardian pointed out, ‘refused to send his children to the borough’s schools. Emily Thornberry, the local Labour MP, who lives a couple of streets away, sends hers to a grammar school 13 miles away in Potters Bar; Margaret ...”

“... you can, control what you can’t,’ has proved congenial for different reasons to John Major and Tony Blair, and to Blair’s heir apparent, Gordon Brown. These men are to Jenkins Thatcher’s political ‘sons’, with David Cameron trotting along behind as a ‘grandson’. (The book was completed before Cameron’s ...”

“... ground pulled from under it. Yes, the party eventually suffered a thumping defeat at the hands of Tony Blair in 1997, an experience that was repeated in 2001. This prompted a certain amount of soul-searching, but nothing too arduous: the familiarity of the current campaign is evidence of how little really changed and how much the party sees its ability ...”

“... José María Aznar after the 2004 Madrid bombings that killed 191 people and injured 1800 nor Tony Blair after the 2005 London bombings in which 52 people were killed and 700 injured invoked any such measures. In France, it was only the second time under the Fifth Republic that a state of emergency had been applied to the entire country (the first ...”

“... Cardiff – but nothing in London. The closest Britain has come to an apology was in 1997, when Tony Blair acknowledged the ‘deep scars’ of the famine. But the famines in India and Ireland are not yet part of our national story. A public monument, in Whitehall, opposite the Treasury, or in St James’s Park, near the Foreign and Commonwealth ...”

“... conversation takes place: Reid: Halloo. Me: Glad you jumped ship in time? Reid: I left after Blair resigned. Last three years and Broon a total disaster. Me: I agree. But you think Blair would have won? Crazy. Reid: Still as subversive as ever, I see. Me: I always had a visceral hatred of New Labour. Reid: If we’d ...”

“... the Darlington constituency but in Sedgefield (a town fifteen miles north), and as a consequence Tony Blair was our MP. I don’t remember there being any kudos attached to this, apart from the time George W. Bush visited in the autumn of 2003 and Blair took him for a pint at a nearby pub. In 2007, a few months after ...”

“... But when the stage is set correctly, the illusion can be very powerful. Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair oversaw devastating electoral machines, which delivered four huge parliamentary majorities in the space of twenty years. Both appeared to establish a new consensus as to what constituted good leadership and policy. The fact that neither leader ...”

“... into passing a law to limit the reporting of evidence in divorce cases. As this book reminds us, Tony Blair raised a loud laugh against the Lords by summarising the vicissitudes of a latter-day noble creation. The first of the line bought his peerage from Lloyd George, the second was a Nazi sympathiser and the third ‘was a jailbird who had first ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... of more than six hundred men and boys at Guantanamo Bay has likewise been brushed aside. Even Tony Blair’s pleas for the repatriation of the British citizens – a selectivity of concern that Lord Steyn rightly condemned – have as yet produced no results. Those who harbour hope for a fair trial for Saddam need only look to America’s ‘legal ...”