Tony blair

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

Ten years ago today, Tony Blair’s ban on hunting with dogs came into force. Rural communities had marched, Otis Ferry had stormed the Commons, but none of it made any difference, and anti-hunt campaigners rejoiced when hunting became a banned sport. But though the law has been in place for a decade, the fight for hunting still goes on. Many hunts, especially those based in more urban areas, are still plagued by hunt saboteurs, as was demonstrated just last month when Mike Lane, a Master of the Tedworth Hunt in Wiltshire, was attacked so savagely by saboteurs wielding iron bars that he was knocked out. The Countryside Alliance are now calling for

Why isn’t Ed Miliband at the British Chambers of Commerce annual conference? Ed Balls tried to defend his boss this morning as he arrived at the event, saying it was ‘getting a bit trivial’ to ask who was attending which conference. The Shadow Chancellor said: ‘Ed Miliband has spoken at this conference a number of times… They’ve got me and Chuka Umunna and this has been tabled and agreed for months and months and months. We’re setting out Labour’s position. As I said it’s the position of me and Ed and Chuka and the whole of the Labour party. Ed has spoken at the conference many times before.’ To be

D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better was the song of choice in the Labour campaign that saw Tony Blair win the 1997 general election. Alas, Ed Miliband won’t be able to use the tune this time around. Professor Brian Cox, who played keyboard with the band, before becoming a TV scientist, says in an interview with the Evening Standard that he would not let Labour use the tune in this election. ‘I’d probably say no to Labour using the song — there are immense pros and cons to all the parties and I can’t quite see a clear direction. It’s very different now than in ’97. In ’97, it was obvious that everybody supported Blair. But

Peter Mandelson’s famous quote about New Labour being intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich has a suffix that is often mischievously omitted: he added ‘so long as they pay their taxes’. But there are a few more things which many Labour members would have put on the end: so long as you don’t earn it by advising Central Asian dictatorships, so long as you don’t hang around with Russian oligarchs, so long as you don’t make it from the Saudis. Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson got filthy rich all right. But the whiff they gave off while doing so has only served to regenerate a very Old Labour disgust

The public can always tell an election is near when the photo opportunities start to increase. Just such an occasion occurred on the 10th anniversary of the Hunting Act in November, when the Parliamentary Labour Party office invited MPs to have a photograph taken, ‘with a large fox holding up a sign saying “Back the ban”.’ Needless to say, I did not attend. In his book Last Man Standing, Jack Straw says with regard to hunting: ‘To me, banning it was a nonsense issue for a serious party making a determined bid for government after 18 years in opposition. It was best left alone.’ Ten years after the Hunting Act

Politicians really are quite unfortunate people, aren’t they? Always being misinterpreted. It’s almost as though they speak another language (some Commons debates suggest they do, anyway) and journalists wilfully translate them wrongly. Today Tony Blair has claimed that his remarks about a lefty Labour party losing to a right-wing party have been ‘misinterpreted’. This is what he told the Economist: – There could be an election ‘in which a traditional left-wing party competes with a traditional right-wing party, with the traditional result’ and when asked if that means a Tory win, ‘Yes, that is what happens’. – ‘I am convinced the Labour Party succeeds best when it is in the