The Periscope Post

The Times A Journey

Tony Blair’s memoir, A Journey, is “a reminder of why Mr Blair won three emphatic general election victories. It is the work of a man who, we needed to be reminded, was the finest progressive politician of his generation,” said The Times. While the paper acknowledged that the “question of Iraq is the shadow over Tony Blair’s time in office,” it argued that Blair was a “remarkable politician, when the anger is spent and the arguments have been exhausted.” “For the clarity of vision, for the courage to take on serious issues, for the capacity to give articulate voice to liberal causes, Mr Blair remains a communicator and a politician of the first rank,” boomed the paper.

The Guardian Labour leadership: Fraternal brotherhood

The Guardian rejects Tony Blair’s A Journey claim that Labour lost the last election because it ceased to be New Labour: “He knows a good deal about winning elections, but this is an audacious claim. For all the achievements of the last 13 years, the country had wearied of New Labour, with its wars, its disdain for liberty and its timidity with the ruinous bankers.” The paper examined the ongoing Labour leadership campaign through the prism of Blair’s claim: “In choosing between them, the party must decide whether the priority is reaching out beyond the Labour tribe with the older Miliband, or moving on from the New Labour era with the younger man.” Pledging no backing to either Miliband brother, The Guardian said “there is little to choose between the two.”

The Daily Telegraph Who won in Iraq?

“The official ending of Operation Iraqi Freedom is an appropriate moment to reflect on the value of the invasion of Iraq,” adjudged The Telegraph. “So was it worth it?,” questioned the paper, before presenting both sides of the debate: “That is an impossible question to answer, for we have no way of knowing what Saddam would have done if the Allies had backed down in the spring of 2003. Iraq may now be, after Lebanon, the most democratic state in the Arab Middle East, but that is hardly a crowded field.” To the paper, only when the last US soldiers have left Iraq (50,000 are  remaining in a supporting role until the end of 2011) will “we start to learn whether this was a prize worth fighting for.”

The Sun Gordon’s gin: Blair’s booze admission surprising?

According to The Sun, the “bombshell revelation” in Blair’s 700-page memoir A Journey is his “admission” that his drinking became a “prop”: “he hit the bottle to help him cope with the pressures of life in No 10,” exclaimed the tabloid in a editorial detailing the many “pressures” he faced in his ten years in office.