Clio, the great muse of History, will have been forgiven a start of surprise when she was called upon to inspire Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, as he sat to pen his memoirs shortly after leaving office. After all, like an absent son returning to the family home, Blair, a man whom Robert Kennedy would have attributed with the "greatness to bend history", paid scant attention to the subject throughout his life, and when he did often baulked at the conservative constraints it placed upon his country’s imagination and ambition. The Millennium PM was a man of the future. The memoir project, A Journey , has forced Blair to check back, however. Although he writes in his very first chapter that he is "not really a retrospective person" and that his aim is to "write not as an historian, but rather as a leader", the very nature of the effort has clearly demanded that he face History, and address his place within it. Blair is the quintessential f ...

It’s been a full sixteen years since the Labour Party last had a proper leadership election, and so much has changed since a fresh-faced Tony Blair triumphed over Margaret Beckett and John Prescott back in 1994. Then, the Labour movement was in the midst of a real debate that had been opened by Neil Kinnock with his policy review after the 1987 general election defeat; a debate that was dominated by characters of radically different political persuasion, from Tony Benn and Bryan Gould, to messieurs Mandelson, Brown and Blair. What is so remarkably refreshing when one looks back on the policy review period is the extent to which real dialogue flourished within the party, both within the academic sphere and at the annual conference, where speakers were regularly given a rough ride by the activists in attendance, and the leadership’s motions shot down. New Labour's leadership effectively succeeded in closing down internal dissent within the party Fast-forward to the Labour Party o ...

Michael Jackson is being remembered all over the world this month after his untimely death at the age of 50. His musical highs, his personal lows, his face, his ethnicity and his place in popular culture and entertainment history are being daily mulled over by the musical intellectual elite, the tabloids, his fanatical followers all over the globe, and the man on the street. Jackson’s commercial success speaks for itself: 750 million records sold; the best selling album of all time; 13 Grammy awards; the biggest grossing world tour of all time - the list, shall we say, could go on.What really struck about his death, however, was the mark it made internationally. From Washington to Warsaw, from Melbourne to Mumbai, from the Bridge (where I first heard the news) to Bangalore Jackson’s death was big news. It took over people’s conversations, national TV channels, newspapers, and DJ’s decks all across the planet in an unprecedented manner. Gordon Brown and David Cameron offered th ...

What do the Mayor of London and the prospective Prime Minister have in common? 10 points for identifying them as being Conservative in their politics, the jackpot for those who point out that they’re Etonians. Those on the left of British politics have traditionally highlighted such examples as constituting evidence for the existence of entrenched and self-perpetuating cycles of privilege within British society. They point to schools such as Eton, Harrow, Rugby and Westminster as representing a gross barrier to an egalitarian society and a fair start for all, and are dismayed by the concentration of privilege, facilities and high-class teaching behind their exclusionary walls. Don’t get me wrong, it’s clearly absurd that a school such as Eton, one that educates boys until the age of 18, should have a library of national significance and 2 museums. However, the real challenge for those on the left of British politics and those who take an active interest in secondary education is ...