30 Days: A Month at the Heart of Blair's War [Paperback]

This is a bright, breezy yet quite fascinating view of the inner workings of Number 10 Downing Streetduring the days leading up to and including the Second Gulf War.

Firstly what this book is not: It is not filled with deep analysis of Blair's policies. There is no weighing of the moral issues behind fighting Saddam Hussein. There aren't many shocking revelations of skeletons in the Downing Street cupboards, no kiss and tell stories here.

So what do you get here? Basically what it says: a behind the scenes look at the workings of the Blair team by a powerful journalist given access for thirty days. There are not many details spared in describing Number 10, from carpet colours to whose office is where. It is interesting to see what roles the leading members of the team play, who can get away with jibes and who tries hard to please.

We also get to see just how much like any other office in the country this is. We have Alistair Campbell's "What do Saddam and Blackburn Rovers have in common" jokes. We see the most powerful people in the country passing around a Wagon Wheel. There is little Leo's train set which seems to run all over the house.

Then we have the relations with other leaders. One of the books strengths is showing how Blair works with Bush and how the American team operates on a much grander scale than the British. There is Chiraq, who is disliked and respected at the same time.

Aside from the war we get a peek at what Blair has to deal with for most of the year: stikes, taxes, school teachers, the Scottish Labour Party.

Overall you will not take much away from this quick read other than a glimpse of what life is really like inside the Blair "den", which alone is worth the admission fee.

This book should/could have been a masterpiece. Mr Stothard is undoubtably a top class writer but one is left wondering exactly how much access he actually had to the inner workings of government. Too much time is spent on trivia and we are left with only snippets of conversation and a vague idea of whats going on. There are some interesting moments but overall the pace is slow and uneventfull

A fascinating, insightful, informative and thought provoking journal of the author's shadowing of Tony Blair for thirty days. A more crucial thirty days in Mr Blair's career, setting aside the run-up to the 1997 election, it would be hard to find seeing as it covers the decision making process to go to war in Iraq and the commencement of that war.

This book is short in length and one feels that as much has been left out as has been left in. Despite its frequent candid unveiling of life behind the door of Number Ten, a weightier effort would have given us greater depth of the political context of the events and the politicians involved. This is only a slight criticism that does not warrant a downgrade to four stars. The decision has been made to make this an accessible rather than highbrow intellectual tome and I can see merit in that decision.

Reading the book now practically nine years on from the events in question, some of the opinions expressed at the time are extremely arrogant, naïve and laughable. It is clear that they expected the whole shebang to be over within a couple of weeks, at the most, whereas officially the war did not end until December 2011 and in practice fighting continues in Iraq between hostile factions. The questions remain. Was it all worth it? What was really gained? Did the allied soldiers die in vain? Is the world a better and more peaceful place without Saddam Hussein? We now know that he was not an actual threat to world peace because he had previously got rid of his weapons of mass destruction capability.

What comes across clearly is the extent to which Blair was Bush's `poodle'. Bush had made it clear to Blair at an early stage that whether he had his country's backing or not he was going into Iraq. So UK's role was not vital. Blair therefore had the opportunity, like Wilson over Vietnam, to veto the war, but no, he assured Bush that he could count on Britain even in the absence of a second UN resolution, which originally he had said would be crucial. There was a mad scramble to The Azores to attend a pre-war summit, which as far as Bush was concerned was a rubber stamping exercise of the events that he was to commence four days later. He waited just long enough for Blair to get his parliamentary vote of support for the war. If he had not gained this then he would have been out of a job and Robin Cook would have been vindicated. The conduct of Robin Cook who resigned just before the war began was admirable, less so that of Claire Short who heavily compromised her true beliefs to remain in the cabinet where she became a grumbling woman in the background, only to resign a little later.

What also shines through is the often, shambolic preparation for meetings and press conferences that Tony Blair attended. That instead he relied heavily upon his personality and the way in which he got his message across.

One gets a real picture of the crazy life that he and his inner circle led during this time, with there being hardly time for sleep.

As Tony himself said at the time history alone will tell whether he made the right decision and he is still young enough to know what history decries before his death. This makes this book all the more important as a marker in the sand to tell us what actually happened. I wish there were more such books written.