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No Prime Minister in modern times has led Britain into as many wars as Tony Blair. In six years in office he committed soldiers to action in Kosovo, Iraq, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan. This analysis shows how Blair's government sought to be at the forefront of a turbulent world order.
Bringing together both contemporary and historical just war concepts, Peter Lee shows that Blair's illusion of morality evaporated quickly and irretrievably after the 2003 Iraqinvasion because the ideas Blair relied upon were taken out of their historical context and applied in a global political system where they no longer hold sway.
The United Kingdom General Election on 1st May 1997 gave a landslide victory to a re-vitalised Labour Party. Tony Blair became Prime Minister with a huge Commons majority of 179 over all other parties. Such a majority meant that extensive changes of policy could be implemented with little effective opposition. During the election campaign Tony Blair had repeatedly claimed that the top three priorities of a New Labour government would be 'education, education, education' , and on page two of the Labour Party's election manifesto a smiling Blair is seen with Nelson Mandela - the unacknowledged originator of the oratorical education triplet. Following a third Election victory in 2005 and after ...
Tony Blair has dominated British political life for more than a decade. Like Margaret Thatcher before him, he has changed the terms of political debate and provoked as much condemnation as admiration. At the end of his era in power, this book presents a wide-ranging overview of the achievements and failures of the Blair governments. Bringing together Britain's most eminent academics and commentators on British politics and society, it examines the effect of the Prime Minister and his administration on the machinery of government, economic and social policy and foreign relations. Combining serious scholarship with clarity and accessibility, this book represents the authoritative verdict on the impact of the Blair years on British politics and society.
Written in the early 80s, this book brings to life the fascinating story of pipeliners, politicians and the chase for the big energy dollars. Franois Bregha discusses the implications of the federal Liberal government's 1980 decision to support the prebuild of a section of the Alaska Highway pipeline project, permitting the export of Alberta gas to American markets at a time when Canada was struggling to conserve non-renewable resources. Bregha traces the steps by which the Liberal government concluded a bad deal, under intense pressure from the Alberta government, Alberta gas producers and the ever-active Bob Blair, whose Foothills company stood to gain huge windfall profits from the project. Bob Blair's Pipeline is a fascinating account of conflict and accomodation between business and several levels of government in the highly-charged field of northern energy development.
British Generals in Blair's Wars is based on a series of high profile seminars held in Oxford in which senior British officers, predominantly from the army, reflect on their experience of campaigning. The chapters embrace all the UK's major operations since the end of the Cold War, but they focus particularly on Iraq and Afghanistan. As personal testimonies, they capture the immediacy of the authors' thoughts at the time, and show how the ideas of a generation of senior British officers developed in a period of rapid change, against a background of intense political controversy and some popular unease. The armed forces were struggling to revise their Cold War concepts and doctrines, and to f...
In the years immediately following the Civil War, the nation's leaders called desperately for reform as they struggled to rebuild a society scarred by death and mass destruction. Recognizing America's need for enlightened leadership, Republican senator Henry Blair (1834--1920) of New Hampshire embarked on an ambitious crusade to enact dramatic progressive changes. Henry W. Blair's Campaign to Reform America follows Blair's remarkable political career. At the heart of his efforts was a push to improve the nation's system of public education, but his reform programs addressed a wide range of issues, including legal rights, economic rights, women's suffrage, and racial equality. He consistently...
In the wake of the publication of the Chilcot report, this book reinterprets the relationship between British public opinion and the Blair government’s decision-making in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It highlights how the government won the parliamentary vote and got its war, but never won the argument that it was the right thing to do. Understanding how, why and with what consequences Britain wound up in this position means understanding better both this specific case and the wider issue of how democratic publics influence foreign policy processes. Taking an innovative constructivist approach to understanding how public actors potentially influence foreign policy, Strong frame...
The Stanley kids and their stepsister try to keep secret a dog that Blair finds, keep David out of the clutches of the school bully, and find out if some escaped convicts really are nearby. Sequel to "The Famous Stanley Kidnapping Case."