Skip to Content

Tony Blair

Editorial: Which way is the "Third Way"?

According to figures released last month, Britain's economy is moving away from its EU "partners" and towards the US. The Guardian, reporting on the figures provided by Eurostat-the official statistical arm of the EU -pointed out that the US in 1997 invested twice as much in Britain as in the rest of the EU and that two-thirds of all EU investment in the US came from Britain. As a result "it is more integrated into the global economy than the rest of Europe" (5 August).

Indeed, as the pro and anti factions of the capitalist class declare their hands, this can only give succour to the "Eurosceptics'" case that Britain's future lies outside any further European integration and particularly the single European currency.

Paying the Piper

Roy Jenkins was a Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer who was fond of good food and fine wines and elegant houses but who was always ready to denounce us for any tendency towards what he saw as extravagance. So in between his visits to the posher restaurants and country homes he would threaten us about the consequences of wage rises above the miserly level set by him. This all went to build up his reputation as a brilliantly successful Chancellor.

His first attempt to get into parliament was in late 1944, when he was one of the two main contestants for the Labour candidacy in Aston, Birmingham. Jenkins lost-according to the successful contender this was because when they were at Birmingham for the selection Jenkins stayed at the Queens Hotel, which was famous for its extravagant chandeliers while the winner put up at the house of the local party secretary-a back-to-back house with an outside lavatory.

Greasy Pole: Waiting for Poverty

Greasy Pole

Waiting For Poverty
Two years after he set out on his historic drive to eliminate the world's problems, starting with a few in Great Britain, it seems that Tony Blair is not impressing as many people as he would like. True, there is now a new bogeyman threatening to undermine all the humanitarian ambitions of leaders like Blair and Clinton—Milosevic in place of Saddam Hussein—and the bombs fall on Yugoslavia instead of Iraq. True, a different bunch of multi-millionaires now have a Prime Minister fawning on them at receptions and banquets in Number Ten. Was this, then, what the Labour Party meant when they bellowed, in their 1997 election manifesto, that Britain Deserves Better?

Mad Tories and Englishmen

Wonder boy William Hague is off on his travels. His mission—to reassure the Tory faithful, still in a state of shock after the events of May 1997, that there is a flicker of life in the party, that it is not yet time to switch off the bleeping machine by the bedside and tip toe out of the room. It has not been the Tories in just this country, who have received this message from the Intensive Care Unit. None of them, it seems, wherever they are, will be safe from a visit from their floundering leader. Recently, for example, Hague went to see what the Tories in exile in Marbella think about him, the party and life in general.

Syndicate content


Theme by Dr. Radut.