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Praise for Blair Unbound
'One message is already clear: that modern government cannot work if its leadership is perpetually at odds with itself. In telling that tale, Blair Unbound could not bettered' Sunday Times
This is as fair a judgement on a Prime Minister as you are going to get … frank and fascinating' Mary Riddell, Observer
Tony Blair's resignation has sent commentators back to the oldest of mysteries; who the hell is Blair, and what does he want? Blair Unbound and Alistair Campbell's Diaries might be read together' Nicolas Blincoe, Daily Telegraph
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Lifting the lid on the most captivating story in British politics today, ‘Back from the Brink’ charts the Conservative Party's remarkable journey from the political wilderness to the threshold of power.
Based on unprecedented access to key figures in the Conservative party, including every leader from John Major to David Cameron, political journalist Peter Snowdon sheds new light on the dramatic decline and renaissance of the party that dominated 20th century British politics.
He reveals how the Conservatives were torn apart by in-fighting as they struggled to come to terms with their catastrophic electoral defeat in 1997 and the continuing trauma of Margaret Thatcher's sudden removal from office several years earlier. Under a succession of hapless leaders - William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard - the party lost two further elections and at times effectively ceased to function as a political force across whole swathes of Britain. It took the emergence of a new generation of Conservatives, and David Cameron's election as leader in 2005, to set the party on the uneven road to electoral recovery.
Packed full of fresh insights into what really goes on behind closed doors at Westminster, Back from the Brink exposes the bitter rivalries and recriminations that have blighted the Conservatives in Opposition, and gets to the heart of Cameron's quest for power and ambitions for office.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I suspect that most people lost interest in the Conservative Party during the mid 1990s and this never recovered after Labour's 1997 landslide. Consequently few people know a great deal, or probably care, about what the Tories got up to during their wilderness years. This book brings back some of those times with a cringeing jolt, remember Hague's answer to Labour's Cool Britannia? His naff baseball cap wearing exploits at a theme park still grate today - albeit he has matured into an outstanding politician.
Snowdon reminds us what a bunch of clowns many of the Conservatives were by ruining Major's premiership with internecine battles which they carried on post '97. They then deluded themselves that Labour would simply implode and the electorate would return to them when the reality was the reverse. Wading through the chapters on Duncan-Smith was marginally less painful than watching the poor man trying to rally the troops at their party conference. Who can forget the awfulness of the 'quiet man turning up the volume?' But this is where Snowdon scores because much of the modern Conservative Party is based on the thoughtful and socially conscious policies that Duncan-Smith espoused but could not push through because he wasn't the right man for the job and the party wasn't ready.
Michael Howard is described as steadying the ship and saving it from disaster in 2005. Indeed it was his help to Cameron which subsequently allowed the Cameroons to take over the party. But, even then the party was, and still is, not entirely comfortable with its leader. Although Cameron was thought by some, and characterised by Labour, as just a 'Tory Toff', the truth is that Cameron was a Liberal Conservative long before the election result. Thus, hooking up with Clegg and co. was not really a big ideological leap whereas for many in his party it undoubtedly was (and still is).
This book isn't exciting and doesn't reveal any massive secrets. But it is an interesting account of the party which domninated 20th Century politics and almost disppeared owing to its own suicidal tendencies. It signposts their return from the brink and potential governmental style. Due to their shared liberal values Cameron and Clegg could probably work together for many years. However, it is frequently events rather than ideology that makes or breaks governments and this book's sequel should be an equally absorbing account.
Snowdon reminds us what a bunch of clowns many of the Conservatives were by ruining Major's premiership with internecine battles which they carried on post '97. They then deluded themselves that Labour would simply implode and the electorate would return to them when the reality was the reverse. Wading through the chapters on Duncan-Smith was marginally less painful than watching the poor man trying to rally the troops at their party conference. Who can forget the awfulness of the 'quiet man turning up the volume?' But this is where Snowdon scores because much of the modern Conservative Party is based on the thoughtful and socially conscious policies that Duncan-Smith espoused but could not push through because he wasn't the right man for the job and the party wasn't ready.
Michael Howard is described as steadying the ship and saving it from disaster in 2005. Indeed it was his help to Cameron which subsequently allowed the Cameroons to take over the party. But, even then the party was, and still is, not entirely comfortable with its leader. Although Cameron was thought by some, and characterised by Labour, as just a 'Tory Toff', the truth is that Cameron was a Liberal Conservative long before the election result. Thus, hooking up with Clegg and co. was not really a big ideological leap whereas for many in his party it undoubtedly was (and still is).
This book isn't exciting and doesn't reveal any massive secrets. But it is an interesting account of the party which domninated 20th Century politics and almost disppeared owing to its own suicidal tendencies. It signposts their return from the brink and potential governmental style. Due to their shared liberal values Cameron and Clegg could probably work together for many years. However, it is frequently events rather than ideology that makes or breaks governments and this book's sequel should be an equally absorbing account.
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In this masterpiece of contemporary history, Peter Snowdon takes us deep inside the engine room of the modern Conservative Party. Taking Margaret Thatcher's ignominious demise as his starting point, Snowdon asks just what went wrong for the party in the early 1990s and beyond. He chronicles the stumbles of successive leaders Hague, Duncan Smith and Howard as the party lurches dangerously towards oblivion. At the same time, he skilfully weaves into his narrative the early history of the party's `modernisers' who would later find their champion in David Cameron.
From 2005 onwards, Cameron takes centre stage in Snowdon's compelling account, which draws on astonishingly good access to the party's high command. Level headed and balanced, Snowdon presents Cameron's triumphs and disasters with the critical eye of a historian but the dramatic sense of a novelist. The end result is a deeply insightful text, which will leave even the casual reader with a clear sense of where Cameron has come from, his at times uneasy relationship with his Party and what all this might mean for a future Conservative government.
All in all, this book is essential reading for anyone looking for the inside scoop on Britain and British politics today (watch out for Michael Howard's appearance in his dressing gown!). Snowdon has served up a subtle but deliciously decadent political dish. This is something to linger over, savour and enjoy.
From 2005 onwards, Cameron takes centre stage in Snowdon's compelling account, which draws on astonishingly good access to the party's high command. Level headed and balanced, Snowdon presents Cameron's triumphs and disasters with the critical eye of a historian but the dramatic sense of a novelist. The end result is a deeply insightful text, which will leave even the casual reader with a clear sense of where Cameron has come from, his at times uneasy relationship with his Party and what all this might mean for a future Conservative government.
All in all, this book is essential reading for anyone looking for the inside scoop on Britain and British politics today (watch out for Michael Howard's appearance in his dressing gown!). Snowdon has served up a subtle but deliciously decadent political dish. This is something to linger over, savour and enjoy.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The updated edition of Peter Snowdon's history of the Conservative Party in opposition, quickly revised last year to include the final stage in their recovery, has four white men on its cover striding towards the reader - Cameron, Osborne, Hague and Clegg. It tells you immediately the sort of book that this is, tightly focused in on politics as seen from and carried out in Westminster.
This is an account of senior political figures and their political, policy and media manoeuvrings. The public feature very rarely (unlike in Deborah Mattinson's memoirs from the Labour side), except in aggregate in voting figures or polling results and even then only occasionally. Despite the majority of voters in the election which put David Cameron into first place in May 2010 being female, women only rarely feature save in the form of Mrs Thatcher or changing party candidate selection rules.
If you take as given that very narrow focus, the book is extremely well executed with a clear narrative style packed full of detailed interview accounts from the main participants. Generally both sides of the argument are put when it comes to assessing personalities, with David Davis and Chris Grayling being the only two senior Conservatives whose reputations come out worse at the end of the book than at the start.
Overall the book's message is that the Conservative modernisers got it right, and where they didn't it was for not pushing on effectively enough with modernisation. That is not a message someone such as ConservativeHome's Tim Mongtomerie would agree with, the absence of a serious consideration of the different strategies available to the party is a shame.
Missing too is any real sense of quite who David Cameron is, deep down. The book quotes him saying, "I think you're right that it took me quite a long time to get here [to the moderniser viewpoint], but let's hope that, like slow cooking, the result in the eating will be much better, stronger and more convincing" yet subsequently there much cooling, warming, cooling and yet more rewarming of Cameron's approach to modernisation.
The book thins out too as we get to 2009 and then 2010, though both of these drawbacks are to a degree inevitable given the lack of perspective that seeing Cameron in power for several years will give future authors. Those future authors, and students of the period, will I am sure however be grateful for the detailed, readable account from one perspective of the Conservative fall and rise packed as it is with so many interviews with the key figures.
If you are the sort of person interested in why William Hague gave up on modernisation midway through the 1997 Parliament or how Iain Duncan Smith went from rebel to leader to outcast to Cabinet Minister, then this is the book for you. Along the way there are the delights of quotes such as the one from ex. Australian Prime Minister John Howard to William Hague: "You know, William, there's only one thing harder than the first year in opposition ... It's the second."
This is an account of senior political figures and their political, policy and media manoeuvrings. The public feature very rarely (unlike in Deborah Mattinson's memoirs from the Labour side), except in aggregate in voting figures or polling results and even then only occasionally. Despite the majority of voters in the election which put David Cameron into first place in May 2010 being female, women only rarely feature save in the form of Mrs Thatcher or changing party candidate selection rules.
If you take as given that very narrow focus, the book is extremely well executed with a clear narrative style packed full of detailed interview accounts from the main participants. Generally both sides of the argument are put when it comes to assessing personalities, with David Davis and Chris Grayling being the only two senior Conservatives whose reputations come out worse at the end of the book than at the start.
Overall the book's message is that the Conservative modernisers got it right, and where they didn't it was for not pushing on effectively enough with modernisation. That is not a message someone such as ConservativeHome's Tim Mongtomerie would agree with, the absence of a serious consideration of the different strategies available to the party is a shame.
Missing too is any real sense of quite who David Cameron is, deep down. The book quotes him saying, "I think you're right that it took me quite a long time to get here [to the moderniser viewpoint], but let's hope that, like slow cooking, the result in the eating will be much better, stronger and more convincing" yet subsequently there much cooling, warming, cooling and yet more rewarming of Cameron's approach to modernisation.
The book thins out too as we get to 2009 and then 2010, though both of these drawbacks are to a degree inevitable given the lack of perspective that seeing Cameron in power for several years will give future authors. Those future authors, and students of the period, will I am sure however be grateful for the detailed, readable account from one perspective of the Conservative fall and rise packed as it is with so many interviews with the key figures.
If you are the sort of person interested in why William Hague gave up on modernisation midway through the 1997 Parliament or how Iain Duncan Smith went from rebel to leader to outcast to Cabinet Minister, then this is the book for you. Along the way there are the delights of quotes such as the one from ex. Australian Prime Minister John Howard to William Hague: "You know, William, there's only one thing harder than the first year in opposition ... It's the second."
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