|
Tony Blair
A JOURNEY: MY POLITICAL LIFE New York. Knopf. 2010. 720 pages ISBN-10: 9780307269836 Reviewed by Patrick Killough (1) biblio.com 07/12/2011 Would you recommend this book to other readers? No. comments: In June 2007, after ten years at the helm, British Prime Minister Tony Blair yielded power to Gordon Brown, his long-time rival within the Labour Party. Within three years Blair rushed into print his 700-pages long memoirs of 2010, A JOURNEY: MY POLITICAL LIFE. Blair's memoirs of his rise and fall within the British Labour Party sprawl, ramble and show signs of undue haste in rushing to publish. Perhaps he feared that Gordon Brown would tell his side of the story first. On the other hand, the closer they come to 2011, the timelier the memoirs seem. Major themes: --(1) "Old" Labour had
too narrow an electoral appeal to win office regularly. Therefore Tony
Blair created "New" Labour, taking the best free market and libertarian
ideas of long-time conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and
grafting them onto Labour's traditional boosting of the little man
while pushing for social justice and equality across the board.
--(2) Blair's onetime friend within Labour, Gordon Brown, never supported "New" Labour wholeheartedly, despite Blair's unprecedented three consecutive national election victories. In the end, Gordon Brown did Blair in as an effective politician. Over time Tony Blair became a great admirer of the USA, especially of President Bill Clinton with whom he worked on the problems of Kosovo. He also got on well with George W. Bush regarding Iraq and Afghanistan, although the press thought Tony wimpish to have accepted meekly being called, "Yo Blair" once by the amiable President from Texas. I did not find A JOURNEY an easy read or as often as I would have liked an informative one. Blair did wonderfully well in restoring a working self-government to Northern Ireland. I did not need to know that Blair does not suffer from jet lag but is not to be denied ample time in the water closet. As love stories go, give me ROMEO AND JULIET any day over Tony Loves Tony. I would welcome reading Gordon Brown's version of how Tony Blair unfairly extended his time as Prime Minister in order to assure a personal legacy while, allegedly, denying Brown his turn at the plate. I cannot think of many friends to whom I recommend A JOURNEY: MY POLITICAL LIFE. A couple of times Blair says that religion is a far more passionate and exalted a concern of his than politics. If so, why does he not seem godly or saintly? -OOO- http://www.biblio.com/books/346489862.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (2) lunch.com 07/12/2011 name of review: The Way in which British Labour Party Politicians Form Enduring Teams Deserves Study rating: * * * review: There is no need for me to duplicate the useful insights in the two excellent reviews already published, as of July 12, 2011 on lunch.com from Gail_Cooke and Robin_Uncapher. I am afraid that very little of permanent value stays with me from Tony Blair's 700-page long memoir of 2010, A JOURNEY - MY POLITICAL LIFE. The greatest exception is the sense that Blair conveys of how serious and intellectual was his political rise within Britain's Labour Party from his earliest days. Late night bull sessions about policy, seminars on politics and finance: these are the warp and woof of the milieu in which Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and other Labour Party leaders grew up over decades. These men and women had well-formed minds and were well aware of that fact. I have no idea whether the same "team formation" is true of leadership within Britain's Conservative and Liberal Democratic Parties. For British Labour, however, the immersion in serious study over years and years created a first class TEAM of men and women at any time ready to exercise power when no longer in opposition. The contrast with the very different American Presidential system could not be more stark. In the end a President stands as alone as he or she cares to. It is virtually impossible, absent "high crimes and misdemeanors" for political rivals within his party to do him in as Gordon Brown did Tony Blair. An American President may or may not have electoral "coattails" that sweep members of his party into power. But neither has he spent decades batting ideas around with all members of his cabinet the way Brown, Blair and other Labour leaders did. It is not unthinkable that, even in America's decentralized, federal sytem, candidates for governor or president might run, in some sense, as "a team." But it is far from the norm. The team nature of Labour Party politics is worth meditating on. Tony Blair led his "New" Labour Party to victory in three successive British elections. He believes that the man who shoved him aside, his onetime friend Gordon Brown, lost the fourth election (2010) for Labour because Brown went back to being "Old" Labour: too much of a big government, non-innovative politician. I found A JOURNEY at least 200 pages too long, badly edited, and too much involved in personal minutiae. But everyone to his own taste. I can think of no friends to whom I can recommend Tony Blair's Memoirs. A few years hence if he writes a proper, balanced Autobiography, it will, I pray, be no more than 300 pages long. And it will almost certainly be of more lasting value than A JOURNEY. -OOO- http://community.cafelibri.com/reviews/book/UserReview -A_Journey_My_Political_Life-74-1655693-210198- The_Way_in_which_British_Labour_Party_Politicians .html#rid_210198 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (3) bn.com 07/12/2011 title of review: What was Britain's "Old Labour" Party like at its best? rating: * * * review: On balance, I do not think much of Tony Blair's 2010 memoir, A JOURNEY: MY POLITICAL LIFE. It is, at 700 pages, at least 300 pages too long. It rambles. It is poorly edited. And, even when tailored to American readers, it assumes too much advance knowledge of the United Kingdom. Abounding in of photos of Tony, A JOURNEY offers American readers not a single map of his country or the places important to him. There is, for my taste, too much trivia about why Blair never drank as much as other Labour Party greats, what his favorite sleep medication is, why he spends so much time in the loo and on and on. Although it took me a long time to do justice to A JOURNEY during a first reading, I decided that the book might make more sense on a second. I was curious, for example, about why Blair felt that the UK deserved something better than "Old Labour." In the process, Tony Blair did give me a sense of what had once been right about Old Labour -- even when it consistently appealed to no more than a third of the British electorate. Consider a very long passage from Chapter Two, "The Apprentice Leader." The year was 1996 and Labour Party leader in Opposition John Smith had just died in harness of a heart attack. Blair decided to try, against the odds, to win Smith's party position. It was time for a change. The traditional Labour Party attracted only two sorts of people (1) trade unionists and (2) intellectual social democrats. There were simply not enough of both types to make Labour relevant to governance in the modern world. Ah, but once upon a time! "The leaders of
the early and mid-twentieth century like Ernie Bevin, or Jack Jones
later, were titans: working-class men who through union meetings,
colleges and conferences, achieved the education society had denied
them, and who were shining examples of self-improvement. In those days,
meetings were well attended -- hundreds at a branch meeting was not
exceptional. They were arenas of debate, often fiercely conducted, of
discussion, of decision."
Still, to Tony Blair, much was to be learned from Margaret Thatcher, Tory Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990. Thatcher was for free markets, deregulation and for a society of equality of opportunity not of Government-imposed weath redistribution. The bulk of Tony Blair's memoir is about how he grafted the best of Thatcherism onto the best of "Old" Labour, creating in the process "New' Labour. Blair and a few true believers then made New Labour into a force to be reckoned with in modern Europe and the world. Another ongoing part of the narrative is about why Blair's one time close friend and political soul mate, Gordon Brown, who never embraced New Labour and in the end forced Blair to turn over party leadership to Brown, who then promptly returned to Old Labour. And lost the next election after Blair's three triumphs at the polls. There are in A JOURNEY numerous nuggets on insights into historical turning points, Northern Ireland, Princess Diana and other personalities. But it takes far too much effort, in my opinion, to dig them out from the dross that they are embedded in. Too much time for too few results. -OOO -- recommended reading: Andrew Rawnsley: THE END OF THE PARTY http://my.barnesandnoble.com/communityportal/review. aspx?reviewid=1743164 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (4) amazon.com 07/13/2011 title of review: President George W. Bush: "Yo, Blair!" rating: * * * review: There is good substance in Tony Blair's A JOURNEY: MY POLITICAL LIFE. Think of his dogged, hard earned triumph in cajoling Northern Ireland's warring factions into a working partnership. Very well done, Tony! And there is no little good writing, with a few memorable sentences, honest sounding probings of the narrator's psyche and stream of consciousness in the midst of wars and domestic reforms. But, overall, the book offends against the classic canon of good writing as pounded into me many moons ago at a Jesuit high school in Shreveport: "CUE": Coherence, Unity, Emphasis. -- The UNITY is simply
the heartbeat by heartbeat unfolding of the autobiography of Tony
Blair. And the man is just not important enough a player in his
narrative to do for A JOURNEY what Achilles did for the ILIAD.
-- COHERENCE: does one event flow from another? Coherence is perhaps too much to expect to find in a political leader's autobiography when the unexpected can happen at any moment: terrorist attacks on London or the 2006 death of Labour Party leader John Smith. This gave Mr Blair his great chance to seize the helm of the Labour Party. -- EMPHASIS: here is the greatest flaw in A JOURNEY. There ought to be a few political theses that stand out more clearly. There should be salient events that are better flagged as turning points. --Instead, amid much dross and trivia of the 700 pages, it takes close reading to tease out how Blair's New Labour differs from the Old Labour of Ernest Bevin (or, as Blair repeatedly alleges, of Socratic gadfly Gordon Brown). In this case, very much worth the effort, which cannot be said for 80% or more of Blair's text. --A really good meditation on militant Islam and how to blunt its narrative is buried in personal trivia about Blair's imperviousness to jet lag but need for considerable loo time. Or ruminations on why otherwise self-mastering politicians drink and wench. What stays with me the most attractively is the brainy, hard striving, intellectual dimension of Britain's Labour Party, New or Old, and the joy that Blair, Brown and others felt in decades of bull sessions, seminars, local meetings and various forms of informal adult education given over to debating policy and learning from history. The equivalent of Labour's elite Tory foes was absorbed via friendships formed at Eton and continued at Oxbridge. It also seems clear that Tony Blair believes that Great Britain can only remain great as a valued junior partner of both the USA and Europe. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are affectionately sketched. And the Blair who likes to be Tony to Everyman does not mind Bush catching his attention with "Yo, Blair," when the microphones are open. All in all a disappointingly average book. Too long. No maps of Blair's UK, though dozens for photos of Our Tony. Is this book a breathless, overly hasty, weakly edited rush to print before Gordon Brown beat Tony Blair to it? I would not do any friend of mine a favor, if I recommended he or she wade all the way through the 700 pages of A JOURNEY. An executive summary: sure. A well selected Reader's Digest shortening: fine. If A JOURNEY were only 400 pages long: probably. But 700 pages! No way. -OOO- http://www.amazon.com/Journey-My-Political-Life/ dp/0307269833/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid =1301481241&sr=1-1 and http://www.amazon.com/Journey-My-Political-Life/ product-reviews/0307269833/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_3? ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addThreeStar =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (5) epinions.com 07/13/2011 Review Title: Tony Blair: "I counted, was a big player, was a world ... leader." Product Rating: * * * PROS: Blair tamed Northern Ireland, managed mourning for Princess Diana. Created "New Labour." Won three elections. CONS: A JOURNEY is 300 pages too long. A rush to beat rival Brown to print? BOTTOM LINE: A sadly average, far too long, rushed into print political memoir of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Curious perspective: Blair's aides and boosters are credited as highly as American Presidents. aohcapablanca's Full Review: In the rather long review that follows I first state briefly why I do not recommend Tony Blair's 2010 memoir, A JOURNEY: MY POLITICAL LIFE to my friends or to most people dipping into book reviews on epinions.com Then I single out a very few representative themes in Blair's book among several more deserving praise: his dealing with Northern Ireland; his articulation of the meaning of "New Labour; his assertion of the priority of religion in his personal values.
* * *
I. Why most
readers may have better things to do
than read Tony Blair's A JOURNEY from cover to cover --(1) Why did I read A JOURNEY in the first place? A North Carolina PEO Club presented it to unsoliciting me in appreciation of a talk that I had given them. Noblesse oblige! --(2) Within 50 pages I was disliking A JOURNEY far more than I had anticipated. The book seemed a love story, a bad one, about Tony Blair's love for Tony Blair. He was a great, natural leader. He would save the soul of the British Labour Party. He was what Great Britain needed in the 1980s but, for its sins, didn't get till he became Prime Minister in 1997. "I counted, was a big player, was a world
and not just a national leader" (Ch. 13). And on and on.
--(3) Blair's memoir, at 700 pages, was at least 300 pages too long. It rambled. It lost itself in trivia (its hero's not being troubled by jet lag, but his need for extra time in the loo, etc.). It was very hard to come up with a list of Blair's five most important values, or achievements from all the background static. Nothing stood out against the breathless, non-stop background of Blair's daily life and lurching from crisis to crisis. One day was as important as any other day. II. Three things Blair
got right:
Northern Ireland, the Labour Party and Religion. There are a dozen or so things for which Blair's book should be admired. Here are three: A. Northern Ireland More than one commentator agrees that what Tony Blair wrought in Northern Ireland was his finest hour. It is the subject of Chapter 6, "Peace in Northern Ireland." To Americans, Northern Ireland is especially salient because of the well publicized, positive activities of President Bill Clinton and special envoy Senator George Mitchell. I, for one, would not have known of Blair's contribution to what appears enduring peace and self-rule in the Irish part of the United Kingdom, had I not read Blair's Chapter 18. In a word, Blair had a plan and stuck with it through thick and thin. Northern Ireland was never an on-again, off-again, back burner project of the British Prime Minister. As he argues: if an American President would give the same priority to Israel-Palestine non-stop during two terms, there would be peace there, too. A great story of the value of tenacity and refusal to stop negotiating. B. Britain's Labour Party In domestic British politics, Tony Blair wants to be remembered as the man who understood and loved the British Labour Party better than anyone else. Paraphrasing G. K. Chesterton's definition of a Saint -- subsituting "British Labour Party" for Chesterton's "the world" -- Blair hated "Old" British Labour so much that he wanted to change it to "New" Labour. But he also loved it so much that he thought changing Labour worth the effort. In glowing passage after passage Tony Blair pays tribute to Old Labour's venerable leaders like Ernest Bevin and other giants. Their passion was a Britain in which all men were equal. Many were self-educated. Indeed, the finest thing about Britain's Labour Party, Old or New, is its broad passion for informal adult political education that lasts for decades in bull sessions, seminars, local party meetings and more. Indeed both Tony Blair and arch-rival Gordon Brown spent hundreds of hours together down the years happily huddling and arguing over policy. But what Old Labour did not grasp, and what Margaret Thatcher, that Grand Lady of British Conservatism, did grasp was the role of "aspiration" in the values of most Britons of whatever class. Blair saw his party year after year attracting no more than a third of the voters while losing election after election. What was needed? A good dose of Thatcherism: a case for smaller, more effective government, denationaliztion of industries, lower taxes, unleashing private initiatives and government-private cooperation. That was what Blair meant by New Labour. And it was Blair's creation, New Labour, that won three national elections in a row. Only when Blair's pushy but very competent successor Gordon Brown slipped back into Old Labour, according to critic Tony Blair, did Labour fail, in 2010, to win a fourth consecutive election. Taking education as an example of what New Labour was about, Blair saw Old Labour opposing his new-fangled Academies (with something of the characteristics of American public charter schools). Old Labour saw them as elitist, in-egalitarian. Blair saw academies as responding to ordinary people's "aspirations," wanting a better life for themselves and their children. Wrote Blair: "My abiding insistence
was never give up on excellence, no matter wherever it might be.
Attacking it ... was to commit a falal solecism. It meant that, in the
ultimate analysis, we were prepared to get rid of something that was
excellent on the basis that it represented the wrong ideology" (Ch. 19).
C. Religion as Blair's supreme personal Value Prima facie, it was astounding to find two or three brief texts in which Blair declared religion more important than politics. Thus, -- "I had always been
fortunate in having a passion bigger than politics, which is religion"
Ch. 21).
-- "I have always been more intereted in religion than politics, but in the work my Faith Foundation does, the two overlap" (Ch. 22, Postscript). With one exception -- Blair's stunningly brilliant proposals for empathetic understanding of Islam, and creating an alternative narrative from within Islam to combat Islamic terrorism -- Tony Blair's A JOURNEY is one of the most relentlessly secular memoirs I have ever read. But on Islam as religion, Blair flashed forth. Read therefore Chapter 12, "9/11: 'Shoulder to Shoulder,' if you read nothing else in Tony Blair's book. * * * In conclusion: there is considerable value in Tony Blair's sadly overstuffed memoir. Even its Index disappoints. I can't remember a single subject that I looked up, e.g. "education," "schools," and found. American readers would also benefit by one map of Blair's UK squeezed in among the dozens of photos of the book's paramount hero. Unless you plan to make a career of studying Fabian Socialism, British Labour, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and such, I recommend that you find a good executive summary of A JOURNEY: MY POLITICAL LIFE and save yourself 300 pages of padding in a book 700 pages long. -OOO- Recommended: NO! http://www0.epinions.com/review/Tony_Blair_A_Journey _My_Political_Life_epi/content_557128650372/show _~allors/pp_~1/sort_~date/sort_dir_~des/sec_~ORS_details =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= blair_journey http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/blair_journey.html |