Blair and Liddle

Liddle: Liddle was a special adviser in Downing Street, and the book is a lively account of the Europe question in the Blair years. He still regards the early years of Blair s government as a time of once in a generation sense of movement in the frozen landscapes of party politics , and is left with a painful sense of missed opportunity , according to The Independent. The 1997 election was a mandate for none of these. It was a cautious and conditional permission for Blair to make the modest changes he promised to primary school class sizes. A lot of people voted for it, which, in our electoral system, gave Labour a lot of seats and On the central questions, of whether Blair should have tried to adopt the euro and whether he could have won a referendum to do so, I disagree with Liddle, but it may be a good thing that such an avid federalist should have been at the heart of Blair s No 10 operation. People always say that politicians should be open to impossible ideas, so that they are not confined by conventional thinking. His is one of the purest expressions of the wasted landslide thesis. This thesis comes is many forms, which ought to be a clue as to how mistaken it is. For Liddle, Blair s huge majority was a chance to change Britain s relationship with Europe, finally putting us at its integrationist core. For others, it was a chance to implement socialism, or whatever other grand cause is closest to the thesis-advancer s heart. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.