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Post by Jan on Sept 9, 2020 12:42:00 GMT
Phoney Tony is what Hugh Grant called Tony Blair. However one forgets just how popular Blair was in the period pre-Iraq, he got huge majorities and had wide support from across the spectrum - The Sun supported Labour and Blair in all three of the elections he won. |
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Post by TallPaul on Sept 9, 2020 13:30:21 GMT
And even after the invasion of Iraq, Labour still won, under Tony Blair's leadership, the 2005 General Election with a healthy 66 seat majority.
Any Labour leader after him would probably have been happy with a 16 seat majority!
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Post by lynette on Sept 9, 2020 23:35:29 GMT
Was he ever a Blairite? I seem to remember him being critical of New Labour's lack of radicalism from the start. But I've never heard him say anything about Corbyn, whom I can't imagine him supporting either, even if he agrees with more of the latter's positions. For a while he was a big fan of Blair personally - he even accepted a knighthood from him, which he explained was an artistic honour for the whole of theatre, not for him personally, so that's alright. But later he became disillusioned with him. He should write a play about himself - there'd be plenty of laughs in it. He could explain why he stopped writing plays and started writing newspaper articles to be recited on stage by various actors in a ‘serious’ way. |
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Post by Jan on Sept 10, 2020 7:35:07 GMT
For a while he was a big fan of Blair personally - he even accepted a knighthood from him, which he explained was an artistic honour for the whole of theatre, not for him personally, so that's alright. But later he became disillusioned with him. He should write a play about himself - there'd be plenty of laughs in it. He could explain why he stopped writing plays and started writing newspaper articles to be recited on stage by various actors in a ‘serious’ way. Because he could. |
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Post by kathryn on Sept 10, 2020 20:48:18 GMT
I do wonder if this is a piece that gets revisited in time and folded/revised into a longer work. It’s a snapshot of a moment in time - we already know more about certain goings on among government figures than Hare did when he stopped writing it.
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Post by bordeaux on Sept 10, 2020 22:33:34 GMT
He could explain why he stopped writing plays and started writing newspaper articles to be recited on stage by various actors in a ‘serious’ way. Because he could. The only reason he can is because the country's most significant artistic directors want to put them on and our finest actors keep wanting to appear in them. Unless you're suggesting he has some sinister hold over Hytner and Eyre and Kent and all the other people he has worked with. They presumably think he is a great writer. |
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Post by Jan on Sept 11, 2020 11:51:30 GMT
The only reason he can is because the country's most significant artistic directors want to put them on and our finest actors keep wanting to appear in them. Unless you're suggesting he has some sinister hold over Hytner and Eyre and Kent and all the other people he has worked with. They presumably think he is a great writer. He’s very much part of the old/white/male/Oxbridge/left-wing theatre establishment that tends - maybe unconsciously - to favour people exactly like themselves - people they meet socially - hence maybe his outrage when the NT appointed someone he hadn’t even met. |
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Post by londonpostie on Sept 11, 2020 14:47:06 GMT
With so many other parallels shaping up, I'm scanning the horizon now for Kier Starmer's own David Hare ..
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