‘New, new, new,’ Tony Blair told a meeting of European socialist leaders shortly after becoming Prime Minister, ‘everything is new.’ Embarrassing at the time, that declaration now seems merely a distant and risible memory. For, after nine years, the one thing this administration cannot possibly claim to be is ‘new’. In his original campaign for
Given the choice between a drunken Charles Kennedy and a sober Sir Menzies Campbell — to adapt the Times’s famous comparison of George Brown and Harold Wilson — we now know that the Liberal Democrat high command chose the former. There were four frontbenchers gathered in a room in March 2004 when they received first-hand
Nothing but the truth From Peter Clarke Sir: Rod Liddle suggests that the public are losing confidence in the police because Scotland Yard ‘has developed a tendency, as night follows day, to change its story repeatedly and shiftily’ (‘Passengers won’t mutiny on planes if they are made to feel safe’, 26 August). Why should I
