Tony blair

Poor old David Cameron. His defeat in the referendum campaign left critics saying he was the worst Prime Minister ever. Now, it seems, it’s not only his legacy which falls short of some of his predecessors. Having quit Parliament, Dave was planning to use the next year to cash in on his memoirs. When his book was first touted, there was talk of the former PM earning a multi-million pound payment. Some said his advance could even match – or beat – that of Tony Blair, who picked up £4.6m for his book ‘A Journey’. Instead, the actual amount Cameron will earn is something of a disappointment. It’s being reported

History teaches no lessons but we insist on trying to learn from it. There is no political party more sentimental than the Labour party. The stone monument of Labour history is Clement Attlee’s 1945–51 administration, so any biography of the great man is, inevitably, an intervention into the present state of the party, even if it comes supported with all the best scholarly apparatus. The last major biography of Attlee was Kenneth Harris’s official work, more than 30 years ago, in 1982. There is a neat symmetry to the fact that Harris was writing during the last occasion that the Labour party decided to join hands and walk off a

Tim Farron’s hardest task in his conference speech today was convincing people to actually listen. A test of how successful he was will be how soon into the 6pm news tonight he pops up on screen (following Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s reported split, the signs don’t look good). So what did Farron do to try and get people to sit up? Banging the anti-Brexit drum was one of his main tactics. Farron promised… ‘Not a re-run of the referendum, not a second referendum, but a referendum on the terms of the as-yet-unknown Brexit deal’ The Lib Dem leader did, to be fair, do his best to empathise with those who

Jeremy Corbyn has today announced the launch of the Labour Organising Academy, a new body designed to look at methods of turning the party’s newly engorged membership into an effective campaigning body. In the pamphlet he produced, Corbyn observes that ‘Labour is now Europe’s biggest political party’ and that the ‘party’s membership will transform how Labour campaigns’. The launch of this might feel somewhat hasty. After all, the leadership campaign won’t be concluded until the announcement at party conference in Liverpool on 24 September – but it represents a big change for Corbyn. It is a tacit acceptance of the notion that his supporters are too inward looking, too concerned with

I had been wondering where Gorgeous George Galloway might pop up next. Defenestrated from his seat in Bradford West, humiliated in the London mayoral elections — where he received 1.4 per cent of the vote — and no longer apparently an attractive proposition to the reality TV producers, his public life seemed sadly to be drawing to a close. But nope, here he is with a film about the person all left-wing people hate more than any other, Tony Blair. It’s a good film, too, in the main. The Killing$ of Tony Blair was partly crowdfunded and it may well be that the only people who watch it will be

Ring a ding-ding — here comes the he-bling. Tony Blair started it. The war, that is. On good taste. This summer he was photographed on holiday relaxing in shark-print trunks and gangsta sunglasses under a blue Mediterranean sky. The former prime minister was on a yacht off the coast of Sicily but — uh oh! — what in the name of sunken treasure was that monstrosity moored between his moobs? Closer inspection revealed it to be a giant gold cross, gleaming like a gilded anchor submerged in greying seaweed. Look at the size of that thing! Perhaps it comes in useful for skewering sardines off the grill at a beach

Westminster prefers to concentrate on one drama at a time. That is why the old rule of thumb was that only one party leader could be under pressure at any given moment. Recent events have upended that convention. The Brexit vote precipitated leadership crises for more than one party. But the spectacle of the Tory leadership election has rather overshadowed the fact that Labour is having its own leadership contest. The contest between Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith, the party’s former work and pensions spokesman, will run all summer. In Labour circles, Corbyn is regarded as the clear favourite. Once again, the hard left appears to have succeeded in getting

As a founder member of the Guild of Blair-Bashers, someone who reacted strongly against him from our first encounter at dinner when he was only an opposition spokesman, as a commentator who railed against the invasion of Iraq the moment the idea was mooted and right through to the end, and as a journalist who throughout Tony Blair’s time at No. 10 beat my tiny fists against the imposter I always thought him to be, perhaps I may deserve your attention now, after Chilcot, that I have something to say in Mr Blair’s defence? I don’t believe that in any important way the former Prime Minister lied. And I don’t

Blair’s great mistake was his desire to believe the best of America. It must know what it’s doing in invading Iraq, he thought. And in 2002, for once, this mighty superpower was hurt, needy – he felt needed by the leader of the free world. Which must be an intoxicating experience. Many of the rest of us shared in this basic mistake, this assumption that this generally benign superpower should be trusted. It’s an assumption bolstered by hundreds of films in which American power saves the day. And it’s an assumption largely backed up by history: Western Europe has been made safe by American power, for many decades. Yes, he

Tony Blair appeared emotional, sounded hoarse, and constantly fixated upon his belief that he acted in ‘good faith’ over Iraq when he responded to the Chilcot report this afternoon. The former Prime Minister spoke or took questions for two hours, and started by saying that he accepted ‘full responsibility, without exception and without excuse’. But he also made clear that he disagreed with Chilcot’s findings that the decision to invade Iraq could have been delayed. The key feature of the long press conference, though, was Blair ruminating constantly on whether he had acted in good faith when taking the decision to go to war. He seems tortured by this question,