Until I get a chance to read Tony Blair‘s memoir A Journey, reviews will have to suffice. Writing in The New Yorker, John Lanchester is not such a fan, although he offers a quote from Blair that is worth its weight in gold. “That Blair was a formidable politician,” writes Lanchester, “can be seen in the glimpses we get of how his political mind works. He tells us how he fended off various leaders of the Conservative Party. “With each successive Tory leader,” he writes, “I would develop a line of attack, but I only did so after a lot of thought. So I defined Major as weak; Hague as better at jokes than judgment; Howard as an opportunist; Cameron as a flip-flop, not knowing where he wanted to go. . . . Expressed like that, these attacks seem flat, rather mundane almost, and not exactly inspiring—but that’s their appeal. Any one of those charges, if it comes to be believed, is actually fatal. Yes, it’s not like calling your opponent a liar, or a fraud, or a villain or a hypocrite, but the middle-ground floating voter kind of shrugs their shoulders at those claims. They don’t chime. They’re too over the top, too heavy, and they represent an insult, not an argument. Whereas the lesser charge, because it’s more accurate and precisely because it’s more low-key, can stick. And if it does, that’s that. Because in each case, it means they’re not a good leader. So game over.”
After reading this, Lanchester aptly notes, “You are left thinking two things: that it would be a blessing if some of today’s politicians took note of that argument for milder rhetoric; and that, whatever your view of Blair, you still wouldn’t want to take him on in an election.”