Search Results

“... to come with me’ was my reply. Months later Kilroy told me how he had written this event up as Field shooting his mouth off in an attempt to bring about the by-election which failed to materialise in Birkenhead. He is right to think that I was looking forward to winning a by-election, and thereby to helping the Labour Party to challenge directly one of the ...”

“... Whether the country likes Derek Hatton or not – and thankfully most people don’t – he has a point. Liverpool’s two-year budget campaign, brought to a climax after the recent vote to balance the books, has had a deadly serious side to it. Militant’s primary aim has of course been to use the City’s financial crisis as a massive recruiting drive for the Tendency ...”

“... The departure of Frank Field, the enthusiastic reception by the Parliamentary Labour Party of Gordon Brown’s spending plans, together with the increasingly desperate attempts by the Government’s leading members, particularly the Prime Minister himself, to discover a Third Way, represent an important moment in the history of New Labour ...”

“... Frank Field has been Birkenhead’s MP since 1979. He was, for the first year of Blair’s Administration, the Minister for Welfare Reform in Harriet Harman’s DSS. Harman and Field didn’t get on very well, and both were anyway sacked after 15 months. Not being a minister has given the former Young Conservative more time for writing ...”

“... that the current shift in favour of the rich – abundantly documented by the contributors to Frank Field’s second Wealth Report – will in due time increase the incomes of the poor. Not even the hardest-hitting indictment of restrictive fiscal policies will move those for whom the defeat of wage-fuelled inflation is the overriding priority in the ...”

“... could have imagined, was Peter Baring. The House of Commons Social Services Committee under Frank Field carried out a long investigation which resulted in unusually strong language for a Commons Committee. The ‘foolishness’ and ‘complacency’ of the Commissioners, the report concluded, has ‘in all likelihood done more than any other single ...”

“... The second key pointer to the kind of government Tony Blair will lead was the appointment of Frank Field as the minister responsible for welfare reform. The Prime Minister has made it abundantly clear that he wishes to be remembered as the leader who confronted the swelling costs of welfare and reconstructed the benefits and pensions system to fit a ...”

“... Chris Smith and Jack Straw and half the Shadow Cabinet and many more on the backbenches including Frank Field, that one-man think-tank of the Labour Right. ‘They’ are the Christian socialists, architects of New Labour, ready to provide the movement with the ethical foundations which seem sorely missing. Perhaps they hold a Bible in one hand and the ...”

“... 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. The thought that this smiling young Scottish public schoolboy could be the next ...”

“... Dostoevsky in the 1840s, a caustic and iconoclastic rising star, was the subject of Joseph Frank’s first volume of biography and critique, The Seeds of Revolt. This volume stood out from many rival studies for the thoroughness of its research, the generosity of its approach (to Dostoevsky and to other critics), its intelligent judgment of Dostoevsky’s psychology and literary intentions, and, rarest quality of all in the Dostoevsky industry, for its sheer readability ...”

“... having his wisteria trimmed – Tory excesses are so much more elegant than ours) is leading the field with an ultimatum to eight of his shadow cabinet that they must repay the cost of maintaining their tennis courts, swimming-pools etc, or else . . . On our side, Hazel Blears (who surely will not survive the coming reshuffle) has agreed that she ...”

“... next year, but she noticed that Blair didn’t seem very happy about it. He’d wanted to appoint Frank Field, who, Blair says in his memoir, A Journey, was ‘hugely persuasive on the big picture’, and told her that Field would ‘lead’ on welfare reform. Field told the civil ...”

“... and chart the influence of that Intelligence on the conduct of both strategy and operations in the field. I think this is a mistake. Hinsley is a fine historian (Professor of the History of International Relations at Cambridge University) and was a distinguished wartime Naval cryptographer at Bletchley Park. But he has no feeling for, or even interest ...”

“... was explicitly raising the concerns of his own constituents, and in their idiom as much as his. As Frank Field puts it, with his own experience as a Labour MP – writing from a sympathetic stance but in some wonderment – ‘he must have appreciated its likely impact.’ In a long and revealing interview at the end of the book, Powell’s ...”

“... Michael White, Martin Kettle, Peter Hain, Alan Johnson, Tony Blair (twice), Jonathan Jones, Frank Field, David Miliband (whose razor-sharp instinct for leadership contests led him to back Liz Kendall), Steve Coogan, Matthew D’Ancona, Betty Boothroyd. Papers aren’t just papers any longer. A lot of these commentaries appeared online, some of them ...”