Peter Oborne writes for Middle East Eye.
The longer they stay in power, the more prime ministers lose their political touch. This seems to be an unbreakable rule, and Tony Blair is emphatically not an exception. For most prime ministers, however, there is an important compensation. The longer they stay in Downing Street, the more accomplished they become at the art of
After the 2001 general election massacre, a consensus swiftly established itself in the Conservative party. William Hague had fought on the wrong issues. Instead of Europe and asylum, his chosen battlegrounds, he should have championed health and education. Hague’s mistake, so conventional wisdom held, doomed the Conservatives to be the rancid voice of the malcontents,
Spring has come late this year, punctuated by news of three horrible, doom-laden terrorist atrocities: the bombing of Shia worshippers in Iraq and Pakistan, the slaughter in Madrid, and the Israeli assassination of the Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. In Westminster there is an air of grim expectation. People’s habits are starting to change. I
Derry Irvine has not gone to pieces, as some former colleagues predicted that he would after being suddenly sacked as Lord Chancellor last June. Friends say that, if anything, he drinks less than he did in government and that his intellect is as sharp as ever. Convention debars former lord chancellors from practising law after
The most significant purely domestic event in what has turned into a terrible week on the international stage was a speech by Jack McConnell to Labour’s Scottish conference in an arctic Inverness. McConnell looked ahead to next year’s general election, as all politicians are beginning to do, and emerged with a subversive proposition: Labour should
The invasion of Iraq and everything that followed caused grave difficulties for the government. But at least it created a sense of purpose and perpetuated the illusion that Tony Blair is a strong Prime Minister. The primacy of domestic issues over the last few weeks has reminded us how vacant New Labour really is. Politics
This has been by far the dullest week in British politics since well before the 2001 general election. Yet it would be wrong to say that nothing is going on; far from it. A meddling government has resolved, once again, to tear up the examination system. There is a Cabinet rift over the treatment of
This year’s dominant theme has been the domestic legacy of the war against Iraq. It has hung over British politics like a cloud of mustard gas, foul-smelling and ubiquitous. This week the cloud at last lifted, and it became possible to survey with a new clarity the ravaged landscape. Lt Col Blair, the commanding officer,
A few weeks ago executives were endeavouring to bring home to Conrad Black the full horror of his personal and corporate predicament, when a sight met their eyes. His wife Barbara, clad only in a leotard and shades, had swept into the room. For a moment nobody spoke. ‘Oh Conrad,’ Barbara Black proclaimed: ‘Let’s just
Iin the immediate aftermath of the 2001 general election victory Tony Blair made a series of important organisational mistakes, for which he is still paying the price. Probably the most disastrous was the eviction of the government whips’ office from its historic base in 12 Downing Street. Alastair Campbell, director of communications, moved in with
Last Monday it emerged that the Saville inquiry into the Bloody Sunday killings would carry on for at least another year. By the time it ends, supposing it ever does, Saville’s shambles will have taken nearly a decade, cost more than £200 million, and some of those most intimately involved will surely have died. Over
By the time Parliament rises for the Christmas recess, the Prime Minister will have endured 18 consecutive days without a day off. This stretch embraces two uncomfortable working weekends, the first of them to the fly-blown Nigerian capital of Abuja for the Commonwealth conference, an event made more fractious than usual by the Zimbabwe squabble.
The intelligent case for voting for Tony Blair in 1997 and 2001 was simple and very compelling. Only New Labour could bring about deep-seated reform of British public services. The argument went as follows: the Tories would never be trusted to tamper with the NHS or the social security system. Their motives were suspect. The
Six years into the Thatcher government, and there was no question about who the Prime Minister was, what she stood for and where she was going. There was already a substantial body of achievement. Not so Tony Blair. Halfway through his second term he remains a rudderless and curiously negligible figure. If he vanished one
Normally the leaves are still on the trees, full of their autumn glory in russet and brown, when Parliament rises ahead of the Queen’s Speech. Not this year. For reasons no one can quite explain, this session has stretched on towards winter. It has been marred by squabbling and drift. Wednesday night’s venomous rebellion over
George Bush needs to be pictured with the Queen to impress voters in the forthcoming presidential election, but, says Peter Oborne, next week’s state visit by the Commander-in-Chief is causing chaos It is obvious why Tony Blair agreed that next week’s visit to Britain by George Bush was a good idea. It was suggested in
Last week’s display of virtuosity by Michael Howard was immaculate, ruthless, perfectly executed: high politics at its purest and most beautiful. His clarity of vision, contemptuous facing down of opposition, cunning, efficiency, resolve, above all the compression of eight weeks’ weary business into 90 minutes’ decisive action, combined to clear the battlefield with a single
For the greater part of the last two centuries it was axiomatic that three great institutions upheld a large part of the structure of our national life. These were the monarchy, the established Church and the Conservative party. In different ways all three were expressions of identical values: loyalty, decency, tolerance, service, respect for tradition.
It has been a week of stagnation and drift in Westminster. MPs have almost nothing to do in the Commons. On Monday night party managers put Conservative MPs on a one-line whip; in other words told them that they might as well go home, a decision that was only partly inspired by the forlorn hope
Three events counted at Westminster this week. The first, and by far the most important, was the dramatic testimony given on Monday to Lord Hutton by Kevin Tebbit, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence. Tebbit confirmed that Tony Blair chaired the crucial meeting at which the ‘naming strategy’, designed to bring the identity of