A Journey; My Political Life

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xvi, 700, [2] pages 32 pages of photographs (some in color). Index. Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. After his resignation, he was appointed Special Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East, an office which he held until 2015. He was elected Member of Parliament for Sedgefield in 1983. He supported moving the party to the center of British politics in an attempt to help it win power. He became Shadow Home Secretary in 1992. He became Leader of the Opposition on his election as Labour Party leader in 1994. He declared support for the Third Way—politics that recognized individuals as socially interdependent, advocating social justice, cohesion, the equal worth of each citizen, and equal opportunity. In 1997, the Labour Party won its largest landslide general election victory in its history. Blair became the country's youngest leader since 1812 and remains the party's longest-serving occupant of the office. Labour won two more general elections under his leadership—in 2001, in which it won another landslide victory, and in 2005, with a greatly reduced majority. He resigned as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party in 2007. He was involved in negotiating the Good Friday Agreement. Blair oversaw British interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone which were generally perceived as successful. He was in office when the 7/7 bombings took place (2005) and introduced a range of anti-terror legislation. Tony Blair is a politician who defines our times. His emergence as Labour Party leader in 1994 marked a seismic shift in British politics. Within a few short years, he had transformed his party and rallied the country behind him, becoming prime minister in 1997 with the biggest victory in Labour's history, and bringing to an end eighteen years of Conservative government. He took Labour to a historic three terms in office as Britain's dominant political figure of the last two decades. A Journey is Tony Blair's firsthand account of his years in office and beyond. Here he describes for the first time his role in shaping our recent history, from the aftermath of Princess Diana's death to the war on terror. He reveals the leadership decisions that were necessary to reinvent his party, the relationships with colleagues including Gordon Brown, the grueling negotiations for peace in Northern Ireland, the implementation of the biggest reforms to public services in Britain since 1945, and his relationships with leaders on the world stage, Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush. He analyzes the belief in ethical intervention that led to his decisions to go to war in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and, most controversially of all, in Iraq. A Journey is a book about the nature and uses of political power. In frank, unflinching, often wry detail, Tony Blair charts the ups and downs of his career to provide insight into the man as well as the politician and statesman. He explores the challenges of leadership, and the ramifications of standing up, clearly and forcefully, for what one believes in. He also looks ahead, to emerging power relationships and economies, addressing the vital issues and complexities of our global world. Few British prime ministers have shaped the nation's course as profoundly as Tony Blair, and his achievements and his legacy will be debated for years to come. Here, uniquely, we have his own journey, in his own words. Derived from a Kirkus review: Long-awaited, uncommonly candid memoir by the former British prime minister. Politics isn't needed to liberate people, Blair writes; it's the other way around. Blair is a political animal to the core. There are few personal details here, in the manner of Bill Clinton's My Life (2004), Clinton being one of Blair's heroes. There are, however, plenty of personal opinions about the people with whom he has served, from his successor Gordon Brown to George W. Bush, who, the author insists, is anything but stupid—though his political intuition "wasn't expressed analytically or intellectually." Blair is famously both analytical and intellectual, and he provides a careful rationale for having bought the weapons of mass destruction canard and committed British troops to Iraq—it boils down mostly to the argument that Saddam was a bad guy and needed to go. The region got a reordering, of course, which was one of the causes of Blair's being invited to leave office by the ungrateful electorate of Britain, for which the author seems to have a touch of impatience, if not thinly veiled contempt. Blair concludes with an argument for further reordering, including the West becoming closer to China and the European Union's "adopting a common energy policy," among other things. A vividly rendered account of life in office, with plenty of beneficial pointers to aspiring politicos on either side of the Atlantic.