Yo, Blair!
/Tony Blair's Amazing Misadventures
I've just finished reading Geoffrey Wheatcroft's brilliant polemic on what he refers to as `the most dishonest and disastrous prime ministership of modern times'.
I know that the book has been out for a while and I'm sure all the serious political bloggers out there have read it by now but if you haven't and you normally steer clear of political essays please think again about 'Yo, Blair!'.
This small, pocket-sized, extended essay can be consumed in one short sitting and if, like me, you fantasize about seeing Blair dangling from a lampost, this could well be the most enjoyable book you read this year.
I've just finished reading Geoffrey Wheatcroft's brilliant polemic on what he refers to as `the most dishonest and disastrous prime ministership of modern times'. I know that the book has been out for a while and I'm sure all the serious political bloggers out there have read it by now but if you haven't and you normally steer clear of political essays please think again about 'Yo, Blair!'.
This small, pocket-sized, extended essay can be consumed in one short sitting and if, like me, you fantasize about seeing Blair dangling from a lampost, this could well be the most enjoyable book you read this year.
From the Guardian Review:
Blair deserves a filleting delivered so skilfully that one scarcely notices that its victim has, in a sense, escaped. The 'genius' and the 'magic' of Blair are mentioned, scathingly, but the emphasis on his flaws provides few clues as to why such a master of deceit and folly retained the capacity to persuade a cabinet and legislature to endorse a war that many, Wheatcroft included, correctly forecast as a bloodbath-in-waiting, lacking any criterion that might render it just or legal. Blair the monster is held fully to account in this timely book. Blair the magus - and that trait lurks somewhere in his make-up, for how else could he have beguiled so many for so long? - is left for some other judge to unravel. It won't be history. Any Prime Minister who so flagrantly perverts its natural course may hope in vain for a kinder verdict than this one.
