London – A brilliant electoral strategist. An intellectual lightweight. A Pollyanna politician, constantly hoping for the best.
Three new books released ahead of Tony Blair’s Labor Party conference this week take aim at everything from the prime minister’s struggles over the Iraq war to his choice of glasses, and they paint a frank and sometimes unflattering picture of the British leader.
“Tony Blair is in many ways quite a weak man,” said Anthony Seldon, a Blair biographer and editor of “The Blair Effect 2001-2005,” a new report card on Blair’s second term in office.
“He’s not an intellectual,” Seldon said. “He didn’t work out until far too late what he wanted to become prime minister to achieve.”
Blair’s office said the prime minister was very busy and had no plans to read any of the books.
Blair, elected in 1997, is one of Britain’s longest-serving prime ministers.
Former Blair aide Lance Price offers a glimpse inside that world in “The Spin Doctor’s Diary,” set for release this week.
Price, who was Blair’s deputy media strategist in the late 1990s, includes a row over Blair’s choice of eyewear, with the prime minister’s desire for designer spectacles pitted against an aide’s opinion that a Labor leader should wear a cheaper pair.
Paul Scott’s recently published “Tony and Cherie” offers a tabloid-tinged look at the life of the prime minister and his lawyer wife. Drawing heavily on anonymous sources, the book describes Cherie Blair’s well-known fondness for New Age rituals, claiming she once had a guru pass a pendulum over her husband’s hair and toenails to detect “poisons and blockages” in the first couple.
