Product Description

Clare Short MP has been one of the government's most outspoken critics, despite having been a member of it for most of its two terms of office since 1997. Her resignation from the Cabinet over the war in Iraq in 2003 caused a furore -- not least because she had already threatened to go a few months earlier. Why did she delay? Why did she then decide to go? What is at the heart of her reservations about the New Labour style of government, and how does it affect the way we all live our lives? Writing 'more in sorrow than in anger', Clare Short now reveals her thinking about all aspects of the way Britain has been run since 1997. Drawing on her first-hand experience of events at the heart of power, she assesses the true effects of the centralisation of decision-making in Number 10 and shows us how New Labour has contrived to damage the goodwill afforded it by two successive three-figure majorities. Candid and forthright, lucid and thought-provoking, this is a major book about modern Britain.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #412641 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

The most honest of politicians?
This book exhibits all of that straightforward, direct and forthright approach we have come to expect from Claire Short. Her ability to express complex political concepts in a clear, concise and very readable manner (the short sentences are noteworthy for a political memoir) is exhibited to great effect as she considers her career and specifically her time at the Department for International Development and her response to the decision to go to war in Iraq.

I suspect this is a book which will not be discussed in five years' time. Its value lies instead in its immediacy; what it has to say about Tony Blair and New Labour's style of government and the resultant effect on our standing and reputation in the world as a whole provides plenty of food for thought.

Could Claire Short be the one of the most honest of politicians?

Revealing on UK politics and needs to be read
Clare Short's book pulls few punches on what she believes has gone wrong in British politics over the past decade. For example traditional libertarianism has been replaced by authoritarianism, morale in public services undermined by bureaucratic obsession with targets and centralist control, government by collective action with half-baked ideas from a clique surrounding the Prime Minister thought to please the media being pushed through parliament. The book suggests that the UK failed to exert a good influence on America's reaction to 9/11 which might have prevented a disaster in Iraq resulting from bad planning. There is even an allegation that the PM misled the House of Commons over Iraq.

This is a revealing, even shocking book because of the standing and credentials of the author as an experienced administrator and politician. It will bring little comfort to New Labour or even Conservatives. But despite its sad concluding diagnosis - that the world is in big trouble, and the UK has contributed to this state of affairs - it ends on a positive rejoinder to take up the torch of ideals that inspired the Labour movement over the past 100 years. It will be good for the next generation of politicians (in any party) to be moved by them and make sure that they survive.

Highly recommended.