Thursday 21 February 2013

Virtutis Fortuna Comes?


Anthony Seldon should fall on his sword, at least unless he can produce that book which no one has ever written, a scholarly, critical biography of Tony Blair.

For a start, he could revisit his reproduction as gospel of the ridiculous authorised version of how a complete unknown, aged only just 30 and with no political history whatever, came to be selected for a rock solid seat which had somehow failed to select a candidate until almost the literal eve of a General Election.

2 comments:

  1. I'm no Blair fan but he had contested a by-election in Beaconsfield, Bucks, a couple of years before selection in Sedgefield. So he was hardly an unknown - often London barristers end up being selected last minute for vacant seats

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  2. Not for seats like that, they don't. Certainly not in those days. And why had a seat like that not selected anyone sooner? An awful lot sooner, in fact.

    He had been a paper candidate at a hopeless by-election which he had enlivened moderately by bringing along his wife's stepmother, Pat Phoenix, otherwise known as Elsie Tanner.

    So what? The streets are lined, and all that.

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