When the Labour government of Tony Blair banned smoking in enclosed public spaces, it was completing an agenda that had been outlined 20 years earlier, in an episode of the sitcom Yes, Prime Minister: “A complete ban on all cigarette …
Labour still has an Israel problem
Keir Starmer, like Israel, must brace for a long war he might not be able to win. The Labour leader has staked out a position that is far more exposed than it might first appear, for this is a crisis …
Keir Starmer should have no hope
Optimism is crucial to success in democratic politics. There is plenty of evidence to back up this platitude. Bill Clinton came from the town of Hope in Arkansas, and never let voters forget it. An advertisement for Ronald Reagan in …
Jamie Carragher: My warning to Starmer
Born and raised in Bootle, one of Liverpool FC’s longest-serving players, few characters embody the Scouse spirit more than Jamie Carragher. So, as the Labour Party circus departs the city after another conference season, who better to discuss the history …
The death of New Labour’s populism
It was around 2014 that I started to notice tracts warning about the dangers of populism from organisations with a close affiliation to New Labour. Over the decade since, little has changed: injected with the rocket fuel that was Brexit …
Anarchy ended our imperial dream
It’s 1994 and Robert D. Kaplan is in China’s Xinjiang Province, home to 11 million Turkic Uyghur Muslims whom the world now knows as the Uyghurs. He soon learns they are “trapped in a grip of surveillance and brutal repression …
Inside Tony Blair Inc.
I
At the end of every week, Tony Blair receives his “box” to review over the weekend. It is no longer the tatty, old red briefcase of a Prime Minister, but a virtual one accessible from his laptop wherever he …
Keir Starmer is no Blair
When men make history, Karl Marx observed, it is not under circumstances of their own choosing, but rather under circumstances given and inherited from the past. History is the one thing we cannot escape; the great epochal force which creates …
Wes Streeting is a man for all factions
Well, comrades, nearly a quarter of the way into the century, how’s it going for socialism? Oh dear. Our humourless, uncharismatic party leader has decided to launch a purge, apparently. Anyone defying the official line will be expelled. Voices of …
Alastair Campbell won’t stop spinning
A gentleman, runs the old joke, is someone who can play the bagpipes, but doesn’t. Alastair Campbell, podcaster, novelist and sometime press secretary to Tony Blair, plays the bagpipes. Indeed, one of his earliest published pieces — in the pornographic …
What Starmer could learn from Thatcher
As Conservative efforts to animate the ghost of Margaret Thatcher ramped up last September, when the real Thatcherite, Rishi Sunak, was beaten by a cosplaying Liz Truss, few noticed that a similar exorcism was taking place within the Labour Party. …
Ireland will always be divided
Sitting together in the small hours of Good Friday, David Trimble and John Hume slipped into sentimentalism, harking back to holidays spent in Donegal and, in particular, the rugged, rocky peninsular of Inishowen. Inishowen is in the Republic, but is …
‘Tough on crime’ won’t rescue the Tories
“Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” remains one of Tony Blair’s most memorable slogans — still durable and pithy well after its coinage, 30 years ago. It is archetypal of the Third Way approach, and continues to …
The music-hall depravity of British politics
What do John Major, Tony Blair and Ken Livingstone have in common? Obviously, they’re politicians who are now some way past their vote-by date, but more than that, they all have music-hall blood running through their veins. Major’s parents, Blair’s …
Tony Blair lied from the start
It was a bright day in March, and the clocks were striking 13. Outside 10 Downing Street, Rishi Sunak stepped forward, bowed his head, and led his country in a minute’s silence. Above him, fluttering in the gentle breeze, was …