Martin Bell: The Truth That Sticks: Episodes
photo credit: openDemocracy
New Labour was propelled into office in 1997 on a tide of protest against the sleaze of the Tory years. Yet at the end of its first decade in power, public trust in public life stood lower than it did at the beginning.
How did this happen? How much of it was due [...]
photo credit: Gaetan Lee
The peculiar circumstances of the Tatton campaign at “a time of hope beyond ordinary imagining”. And how short-lived that time of hope was!
Before long I was described as “a fully paid up member of the awkward squad”. But I wasn’t awkward enough. I should have resigned ...
photo credit: mexican 2000
Our government was elected on the votes of less than a quarter of the electorate. Yet we preach democracy and dare to impose it on others by force of arms.
The House of Commons was the setting for the four most shocking years of my life. To hear about it is one [...]
photo credit: zphillips
MPs, whose creative accounting and financial abuses have the people up in arms, seem unable to see themselves as others see them. A new wave of scandals has broken up us, leading to the conclusion that petty and not-so-petty corruption is widespread and endemic.
I’ve been ...
photo credit: wikier
Actually, there is one. But it is limited (until recently) to the management of the economy, to the government’s record on foreign aid and to the Northern Ireland peace deal. I speak from experience. I was a young reporter on the streets at the height of the troubles. Those ...
photo credit: bovinity
The abuse of patronage was an issue that haunted Tony Blair’s government for its last two years.
It wasn’t confined to Labour, but it was Labour who had come to power on a promise to clean up politics. Now its major donors and benefactors, like the Tories’, were routinely ...
photo credit: from a second story.
The most serious decision a government takes is to send the armed forces to war. In the case of Iraq the Labour Government took it almost nonchalantly, and on the basis of intelligence which was not only flawed but false.
The untold story – and the one that I think [...]
photo credit: World Economic Forum
To send the armed forces into action five times in eight years was a high “war count” by anyone’s standards, but this was New Labour’s record.
The doubt here is about its do-ability. This is Britain’s fourth Afghan war. So guess who won the other three? ...
photo credit: ★eclaire
This is about our sense of history and how we seem to have lost it. Someone close to the New Labour project described Tony Blair’s Ten Downing Street as “A history free zone”.
Maybe that’s why he sent the soldiers to two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, where the British ...
photo credit: Boris from Vienna
The point here is that we are not just facing unprecedented perils – climate change and nuclear proliferation among them – but doing it under the leadership of politicians who are remote and disconnected figures with little personal experience of anything but politics.
The ...