Tony blair

Is Labour’s war on the media finally over? After Mr S reported this week that journalists were jeered for asking questions at a Tony Blair event, relations between the party and the media appear to have warmed. As Ed Miliband and Ed Balls head north of the border to campaign with Jim Murphy, it fell to the Scottish leader to make peace with hacks. Opening up their press conference in Edinburgh to journalists’ questions, Murphy declared they would let some ‘people’ ask questions too, once the pesky media had been dealt with: ‘It’s only journalists with their hand up at the moment, but they’re people too.’ A notable warming in relations, Mr S thanks

The editor of The Spectator isn’t the only person thinking about the prospect of Ed Miliband becoming the next Prime Minister. Eighty educationalists have signed a letter in the Daily Mail today warning about the danger of a future Labour government curtailing academy freedoms. They’re concerned about Ed Miliband’s pledge that Labour would reintroduce ‘a proper local authority framework for all schools’ – which sounds a lot like placing all taxpayer-funded schools back under local authority control. The letter-writers flag up two freedoms they are particularly concerned about: the freedom that academies and free schools have to set their own pay and conditions and the freedom they have over the curriculum.

Finally, the presidential race got interesting. The thought of Hillary Clinton vs Jeb Bush was too much of a rerun of the same old thing: big government liberal vs big government conservative arguing about how best to spend Americans’ money. And they both share a taste for military excursions – white boots marching in foreign lands. Well, now there’s a candidate officially in the race who stands for something completely different. Rand Paul’s libertarian crusade could be about the most exciting candidacy in my political lifetime. It won’t star the most exciting candidate. Senator Paul (Kentucky) wears the standard uniform of the college Republican: blue blazer, red tie, grey slacks. The

Given that Gordon Brown has hardly been seen in the Commons since losing power five years ago, it was a bit rich of him to say goodbye now. But the SNP uprising has started — it looks set to claim his own seat of Kirkcaldy — and so he’s off. In his final speech to the House of Commons today, he lamented the gradual breaking apart of the UK which was, of course, started by his own party. After indulging in niceties towards Parliament as an institution, the Speaker and his constituents, Brown promised to devote his efforts away from Westminster to ‘the idea of Britain’ and attacked the Conservatives’ plans to

As Fraser Nelson says on this morning’s Spectator podcast, David Cameron will likely be regretting yesterday’s announcement for the rest of his premiership. He’s not a ripe watermelon; highlighting that he has a best before date won’t encourage anyone to eat him now, before he grows mould. Worse, he’s announced a shortlist of three possible successors: ‘the Theresa Mays, and the George Osbornes, and the Boris Johnsons’. We all know the troubles a similar announcement caused Tony Blair, but even if Dave managed to sleep through the Blair-Brown years (from the opposite green benches), dipping into the biography of any pre-modern English monarch should have taught him of the dangers of

As the election approaches, politicians will find their diaries packed with various events. It’s an equally busy time for those born with the gift of looking like a politician. ‘I’m lucky that I look like Boris,’ says Drew, a Mayor of London ‘lookalike’ who is on the books at the Susan Scott agency. ‘I often get stopped and while it’s not always pleasant, it’s nowhere near what a David Cameron lookalike I know gets.’ Alas, Boris won’t have Drew’s vote. ‘I may make money out of Boris, but I have never voted for him and that’s not going to change.’ With election party season on the horizon, Mr S has

I’ve met people at political events who seem otherwise normal, and then Tony Blair’s name is mentioned and their eyes light up in a way that suggest a chemical reaction has taken place in their brain. Likewise whenever the former Labour prime minister is mentioned online, it’s like a hand grenade has been thrown into the loony pond. Up they all chirp on social media, announcing how the war criminal must be sent to the Hague one day. The most recent case was Tony Blair’s offer to fund Labour candidates at the election, and the decision by two of them to turn it down; in both constituencies, Northampton North and Dundee East,

This week Tony Blair donated £106,000 to the Labour Party, with £1,000 going to each Labour candidate fighting for a target seat. Ed Miliband has since faced flak for accepting the ‘blood money’ funds, due to unease over the source of the cash given Blair’s dealings with dictatorships such as Kazakhstan. Not that any of this is worrying Blair. Mr S hears that the former Labour leader has been busy sunning himself in Myanmar, where human rights are regarded as among the worst in the world. Blair, who has an estimated worth of nearly £100 million, was spied fine dining in the country’s capital Naypyitaw. When a journalist inquired as to what he was doing there, they were

You almost have to admire Justin Forsyth’s brass neck. He is a former Gordon Brown spin chief earning a Prime Ministerial £138,000 for running Save the Children. Or, rather, transforming it into Save the Labour Party with various attack ads claiming that kids need to be rescued from wicked Conservative austerity. Here’s an example of its handiwork: You’d think that Forsyth would be rather embarrassed about abusing the charity’s resources in such a way, but last year Save the Children went one further and gave an award to Tony Blair. That really was too going far. There was outrage from Save the Children staff and donors, even an online petition – it’s bad enough

It’s probably not the news everyone wanted to hear, but Mr S feels a duty to let readers know that Alastair Campbell is considering a return to politics. Furthermore, this could involve the former Labour spinner standing as an MP. Speaking to India Knight for the April issue of Red magazine, he comments that a friend recently suggested he join parliament. His reply was: ‘I’ll regret not doing it, but I know I’ll regret it if I do it as well… The size of the regrets will be big either way.’ Campbell goes on to discuss the inner struggle that took hold of him when a woman asked him how he has managed to walk away