cover image Tony Blair, the Man Who Lost His Smile

Tony Blair, the Man Who Lost His Smile

Leo Abse. Robson Press, $15 (337pp) ISBN 978-1-86105-698-6

Imagine a biography of Bill Clinton written by an old-school Democratic member of Congress angered by his centrist policies, in which it's taken for granted readers already know about the inner workings of the legislative process and the party's internal dynamics. Now imagine a British reader trying to make sense of casual references to, say, Barney Frank. Such is the effect on American readers of Abse's portrait of Prime Minister Tony Blair, first published in England in 1996. Abse spends nearly a third of the book recounting insider gossip about obscure (to Americans, anyway) members of Parliament while indulging heavily in elaborate Freudian theorizing about their psychosexual character. The two tendencies increase markedly once he finally turns to Blair. The analysis is facile to the point of cliche, however, suggesting Blair weakened the Labour Party's socialist legacy because he's a conflict-avoiding exhibitionist who seeks approval from his mother and fears his father. And one strongly suspects Abse's vehement criticism stems in part from lingering resentment over Blair's blocking his proposed divorce reform legislation 20 years earlier. Since Abse can't quite articulate his beef against Blair in a way that would engage anyone but hardcore Labour supporters, his complaints are likely to be ignored here, especially since James Naughtie's analysis of Blair, The Accidental American, already has a comfortable headstart.