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I dunno why you would dismiss it so blithely. It's actually right up your strasse, I suspect.


Far from it being a hatchet-job, it is actually a very considered treatise on the dysfunction at the heart of the entire New Labour government. It does not focus on Blair exclusively (though it makes it abundantly clear that he was the 'driving-force', with all of the problems fundamentally stemming from his MO), and touches on all manner of ineptitudes; not least the constant war between PM and Chancellor, the inherent mistrust of agnostic Civil Servants and the consequent lack of decision-making expertise, and the contrast between the vacuity of Blair's "numbers game" approach, and the left-wing ideologues who formed his first Cabinet (which the book makes clear was a Cabinet in name only).


Perhaps the most interesting (and surprising) aspect of the book, is the fact that many of the New Labour policies were tacitly acknowledged as failures after Blair's first term, and that they actually ended-up rolling these back and re-introducing policies which had been implemented by John Major's Tory government; principally in the areas of Education and the NHS.


It is no muck-raking exercise to "get Blair". It is a genuinely interesting and enlightening tome about New Labour (framed, as you would expect, around its principal actor), and once you have learned your words and times-tables, I do recommend you have a nose through it.


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