John Rentoul is chief political commentator for The Independent on Sunday, and visiting professor at Queen Mary, University of London, where he teaches contemporary history. Previously he was chief leader writer for The Independent. He has written a biography of Tony Blair, whom he admired more at the end of his time in office than he did at the beginning. Click here and 'like' to receive updates on Facebook
Now that I have read A Journey thoroughly, I am reading some of the reviews. Someone with a sense of humour at The Sunday Times had the idea of asking Robert Harris to write one (pay wall). He managed to hold back from mentioning the “disastrous Iraq war” until the eighth paragraph.
If you want a [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Wednesday, 15 September 2010 at 3:14 pm
Thus to the other brother. Christopher Hitchens has written a review of Tony Blair’s memoir for The Atlantic, which I came to via Neil D at Harry’s Place.
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Wednesday, 15 September 2010 at 12:59 pm
Peter Hitchens (right) is a lovely chap, but he really ought to try harder to write stuff that breaks out of the box of conventional wisdom. He started well in his Mail on Sunday column a couple of weeks ago, contradicting its editorial line by asserting that David Kelly committed suicide. But then spoilt the [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Wednesday, 15 September 2010 at 12:18 pm
Interesting stuff as usual from Rachel Sylvester in today’s Times (pay wall). She quotes “one Tory minister” substantiating Tony Blair’s thesis (in his memoir he says that the coalition is vulnerable on crime):
We just don’t have anything to say on law and order. This should be natural territory for us but we’ve lost it. If [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 14 September 2010 at 10:48 pm
Alex Massie asks number 385 in my series of Questions to Which the Answer is No. This one ought to be disqualified, really, as he does not imply that the answer could be anything else. But he makes a good point, which is that the the Castros have just announced huge cuts in public sector [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 14 September 2010 at 10:09 am
The full tables for YouGov’s alarming poll of Labour Party members and Labour-supporting trade unionists are here, here and here.
I am not going to pretend that they do not make grim reading for supporters of David Miliband, who trails his brother (right) by the statistically insignificant but psychologically important margin of two points on the [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Monday, 13 September 2010 at 10:18 pm
Ed Balls was interviewed on Friday by my good colleague Matt Chorley for today’s Independent on Sunday. Apart from the bit where he said he had not just arrived from Mars, which I do not think he meant as an insult to the Milibands, I was most interested in his criticism of Gordon Brown for [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Sunday, 12 September 2010 at 12:10 pm
Frank Field is and always will be one of the Heroes of the People. Tony Blair is unnecessarily rude about him in A Journey, saying: “His thoughts were not so much unthinkable as unfathomable.”
But his thoughts about cutting the length of school summer holidays on the front page of today’s Times (pay wall) are not [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 11 September 2010 at 4:55 pm
Today’s innuendo special in the Daily Mail about the former Prime Minister (right) has an eye-catching third paragraph about a hotel in Abu Dhabi in which Tony Blair sometimes stays:
Its proud owners have recently announced the acquisition of the world’s first gold bar vending machine, so its filthy rich guests can stock up on bullion, [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 11 September 2010 at 3:45 pm
Sunder Katwala makes a good point about the launch of the first Yes campaign for the referendum on the Alternative Vote (right):
Curious that a six-strong steering group does not seem to contain even one person who is actually in favour of the Alternative Vote as their preferred electoral system.
All its members are supporters of proportional [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 11 September 2010 at 3:28 pm
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