The other Prince of Darkness

This is a clever publishing idea, a light academic-historical cloak for another set of political memoirs. Jonathan Powell, chief of staff (the term should not be taken literally) at No. 10 throughout Tony Blair’s premiership, kept a diary. Blair himself couldn’t, Powell explains: ‘There simply isn’t time for a prime minister to set out detailed reflections and lead a country at the same time’. One wonders how Ronald Reagan managed it. Besides, is not reflecting on events, actions and consequences — ‘examining with diligence the past’ — one of Machiavelli’s precepts?

Despite its title, however, the book is not a re-casting of the tenets of Machiavellianism. It is an extended essay, the exam question being not so much ‘Examine Machiavelli’s The Prince and The Discourses with special reference to Tony Blair’s premiership’, which could have been dull, but rather ‘Describe Blair’s premiership with special reference to The Prince and The Discourses’ — which needn’t be dull as long as the Machiavellianism isn’t laboured.

On the whole it isn’t. For the most part, Machiavelli observes human nature as much as political method, and so Powell judges him still apt, and does so with considerable wryness. The narrative is lively enough, though at times a bit simplistic:

Great leaders are both born and bred. They need to be brave and endowed with extra- ordinary political instincts, but they also have to be armed with a range of skills if they want to carry people with them.

One is left wondering what is new in this New Machiavelli.

But, goodness, it is revealing. Machiavelli was acutely aware of how the way in which a prince comes to power affects the way he governs. New Labour, in Powell’s account, resembles the civil administration of a foreign power brought in to govern a newly conquered state.