Tony blair

There is a little vignette in the first volume of Alastair Campbell’s diaries that makes it abundantly clear that, at the time, we were being governed by people who were mentally ill. It is yet another furious, bitter, gut-churning row involving Campbell, Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson and concludes with Mandelson stamping his little feet and screaming: ‘I am sick of being rubbished and undermined! I hate it! And I want out.’ The cause of this dispute was not whether or not Labour should nationalise the top 200 companies and secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry. Don’t be silly. It was about whether Blair should wear a suit and tie to deliver a speech or if, instead, he should put on a nice pair of cords.

If you want to know just how much anger Damian McBride’s book has created in the Labour party—and particularly its Blairite wing, just watch Alastair Campbell’s interview with Andrew Neil on The Sunday Politics. Campbell doesn’t scream or shout but the anger in his voice as he discusses McBride’s antics is palpable. He did not sound like a man inclined to forgive and forget. This whole row is, obviously, a massive conference distraction. Those close to Ed Miliband had hoped that this year, the Labour leader would get a free run at conference now that his brother has quite politics. But as one of his colleagues said to me late last week, ‘it used to be all about David, now it’ll be all about Damian.

Surprise, surprise — Michael Gove doesn’t think much of Ed Miliband. To keep up the momentum on Labour's summer of discontent, the Education Secretary gave a speech at Conservative HQ this morning, focusing on Labour's troubled relationship with the trade unions — again. He was clearly enjoying himself as he compared the Labour leader's present position to two of the party's moderate forces: ‘And if anyone thinks I am asking too much I ask simply this - what would Blair do? Indeed, what would even Kinnock have done? ‘The sad truth is that - charming, intelligent, eloquent, thoughtful, generous and chivalrous as Ed Miliband may be - in this critical test of leadership he has been uncertain, irresolute, weak.

As the House of Lords prepares to vote on gay marriage, a YouGov poll shows that the opinion of people who regard themselves as 'religious' is 48pc against and 44pc in favour of gay marriage. Given the margin of error, this can be seen as an even split. So why the acrimony? The answer, in my opinion, is the way that David Cameron has gone about this. He ought to have said something like: 'I'm in favour of religious freedom, and think it should be absolute. It's come to our attention that some liberal strands of Judaism and Unitarian churches want to conduct same-sex marriage ceremonies but are banned from doing so by the government. The state ought to have no role in religious affairs, so I'm lifting the ban.

Lord Bell, AKA the King of Spin, made some noise at the annual Freedom Dinner (established by libertarians to mark the anniversary of the smoking ban) last night at Canary Wharf’s cavernous Boisdale. He had stern words for the anti-tobacco lobby: ‘There is not one shred of scientific evidence of the existence of passive smoking and it’s one of the more terrible lies told by a democratically elected government in the world.' Bell, though, was only getting going. He aimed his real fire at some recent prime ministers, saying: ‘We could do that Blair devil eyes campaign, because he is actually the devil.

Since we launched The Spectator Archive, the most read piece has been the first ever published article by one Anthony Blair in 1979, before he switched to the more informal Tony. Here, the future Labour Prime Minister examines how immigrants were unfairly treated by the British justice system. Reportedly, the article was only printed because Blair was turned down from the New Statesman. Many thanks to @JohnRentoul for digging up this article. Last week's case of the Patel children, three Indian boys who were deported from England on Tuesday after delay, and ministerial embarrassment, emphasised the uncertainty and ambiguity which surround the status of immigrants in this country.

Tony Blair has plenty to say on the crisis in Syria in his interview in today's Times, as you might expect. But he also makes a few points on other aspects of foreign policy that are worth noting, particularly regarding Europe. The former Prime Minister tells Alice Thompson and Rachel Sylvester that David Cameron was wrong to offer a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union. He says: 'We should at least pause for thought on this. I can tell you, people around the world now ask about this constantly, with an air of incredulity that Britain should even think of such a thing. Europe will be a lot less effective and probably less effectively run if Britain absents itself. If you pull out, that's a big decision. You're going to relegate your influence.

I never really saw the point of the Chilcot Inquiry and nothing that has happened in the years since it first sat has persuaded me I was wrong to think it liable to prove a waste of time, effort and money. Dear old Peter Oborne pops up in today's Telegraph to confirm the good sense of these suspicions. Chilcot, you see, is most unlikely to satisfy Tony Blair's critics, far less provide the "smoking gun" proving that the Iraq War was a stitched-up, born-again conspiracy promoted by George W Bush and eagerly, even slavishly, supported by Anthony Charles Lynton Blair. This is not an argument about truth. If Chilcot fails to deliver a report confirming the existence of this kind of plot then this will be taken as proof that plot really existed.

Where there has been discord, Mrs Thatcher’s funeral brought harmony. From my seat in the gods at St. Paul’s, I watched as Westminster’s lesser mortals gathered in front of the altar to shoot the breeze in the hour before Lady Thatcher’s coffin arrived. Gordon and Sarah Brown were first to arrive. They plonked themselves down, but soon jumped up to chat to a passer-by. Quick as a flash, Ed Miliband and his wife Justine pinched the Browns’ vacated chairs. Time rolled by, and Miliband found it impossible to shake the shadow of his old master as he walked around the nave. How’s that for art imitating life? The pews soon filled up with cabinet ministers.

Tony Blair asked Labour seven awkward questions this week, ranging from issues that everyone's talking about to rather more quirky ones that the former Prime Minister would like everyone to talk about, like using advances in DNA to fight crime. It's the mid-term, when parties start to wonder what they can tell voters they stand for in the next general election, what problems they believe the country is facing, and, more importantly, whether they think they've got a hope of solving them. I've spent most of today talking to Tory MPs about what they think the seven awkward questions for their own party might be, and here they are, in all their awkward and quirky glory: 1. How do the Tories address public concern on immigration while continuing to be a globalised economy?

Nothing like a former PM poking their nose into your business, eh? John Major experienced what Daniel Finkelstein this week delicately described as 'sub-optimal' behaviour from Margaret Thatcher when he was in office, and today Ed Miliband has his own helpful little missive from his own former leader, telling him that if only he were just like Tony Blair, then everything would be OK. Blair's piece in the New Statesman isn't surprising in many ways as it articulates the former Prime Minister's firm belief that his party must engage with the centre of politics as it is at the moment, rather than trying to move that centre in the direction it would prefer.

Several Labour MPs have expressed their disapproval of George Osborne’s comments about the taxpayer funding Mick Philpott's lifestyle. For example, Andy McDonald, MP for Middlesbrough, said that welfare is a ‘completely separate discussion, it should not be had in the context of the most appalling crime of a father killing his six children. It just demonstrates how out of touch George Osborne is. He may as well make adverse comments about the entire population of a town or a religion, it’s absolute nonsense.’ The obvious problem with this is that Osborne acknowledged that they were separate issues.