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In this hard-hitting and highly controversial book, reforming parliamentarian Leo Abse presents a remarkable and timely analysis of Tony Blair, architect of New Labour and the man likely to become Britain's next prime minister.
In a powerfully penetrating and forthright investigation of Blair's psyche, Abse deploys his psychoanalytical scholarship to consider the forces and influences that have driven Blair. He examines the house of secrets in which Blair was reared, where the promiscuous grandmother forever cast a shadow, where the illegitimate stricken father - authoritative, ambitious and politically unstable - dominated the household, and where death unfairly invaded the family domain. Abse goes on to show how the traumatic events of Blair's childhood left him a loner, an estranged man who first sought to resolve his private dilemmas in rock music and religion and then, belatedly, in politics. Forever fearful of stirring up the unassuaged aggression caused by his earliest bitter experiences, Blair, Abse argues, has reserved that aggression for those in the Labour Party who mock his illusory dream of a Britain re-born without pain and strife - a conflict-free society governed by a consensus that will, if necessary, be ruthlessly imposed by diktat.
Dramatically contrasting the unconscious drives that have brought Blair to the leadership with the positive motivation of John Smith and Labour's two genuinely charismatic leaders, Hugh Gaitskell and Aneurin Bevin, this veteran socialist's powerful call to resist Blair's hijacking of the Labour Party will bring courage to all those witnessing with dismay the debasement and betrayal of Labour's traditional values.
