The Point of Departure: Diaries From the Front Bench - Couverture souple

Robin-cook

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0743257235 ISBN 13 : 9780743257237

A propos du livre

Revue de presse

This book is great fun to read. It has the authentic touch of both the great and the trivial issues that dominate the daily life and the grind of ministers in any government" Guardian
'Robin Cook's Point of Departure provides the best insight yet into the workings of the Blair cabinet. His diary entries are highly readable, and sometimes very funny' Elinor Goodman, Books of the Year, Sunday Telegraph 30/11
'Cook does not accuse Blair of deliberate deception. Cook's restraint makes an even more damning case. He guides the reader towards a devastating guilty verdict on the Prime Minister without making too many sweeping judgments himself. While narrating a tragic and humiliating failure in foreign policy, Cook also manages to be very funny' Independent on Sunday, Political Books of the Year 14/12
'Instant history can tell us how events appeared before they became obscured in the fog of hindsight. For hindsight is the great enemy of the historian. We forget, all too easily, that what is now in the past once lay in the future. Instant history, especially when, as with Robin Cook's Point of Departure, it is based on the diary of a participant, is history written when the outcome was still unknown' FT, UK Politics
'The best-written and most thoroughly researched of the post-election batch of cabinet biographies,' Peter Kellner, Evening Standard.
'This thoroughly researched and well-crafted biography has both revelations and insights to offer about the life of one of the most intriguing members of this government,' Andrew Rawnsley, Observer
'An admirable instant biography, taking in all its subject's trials and tribulations since he came to office,' Anthony Howard's political books of the year, 1998, Sunday Times
"Devastating on how Blair found himself taking Britain to war in the shadow of President Bush, after 'grossly distorting', in Cook's phrase, the threat of Saddam's weapon's to the world"
Sunday Times 29/8

Présentation de l'éditeur

On 17 March 2003, Robin Cook, Leader of the House of Commons and former Foreign Secretary, resigned from the Cabinet in protest against the coming war in Iraq. His resignation speech against that war prompted the first standing ovation in the history of the House and marked the end of the ministerial career of one of Labour's most brilliant politicians. His arguments against that war are of profound interest and importance to American readers.

For the two years prior to his resignation, Robin Cook kept a diary, a personal record of Labour's second term, that forms the core of this narrative. The Point of Departure is Robin Cook's unvarnished account of this dramatic period in British political history. Though surprised by his abrupt dismissal in 2001 as Foreign Secretary, he became determined to effect the changes in Parliamentary democracy that he believed were essential if Parliament was to move into the twenty-first century. As Tony Blair told Cook on offering him leadership of the House of Commons, "This is the job for you."

Drawing on firsthand experiences in the Commons and the Cabinet, of encounters in conferences and corridors and late-night conversations, Cook details his gathering disillusionment with Tony Blair's change of direction, which he believes to be profoundly mistaken, and, above all, the change in foreign policy that led the United Kingdom away from its destiny in Europe and into participation in President Bush's war in Iraq.

This is the inside story of a government in power -- and of the tensions between those who govern. But above all it is the story of a politician who genuinely wanted to bring democracy closer to the people, but who saw a government increasingly detached from the values of himself and his party, and who developed a growing conviction that the government position on Iraq was morally, diplomatically, and politically wrong.

Détails de l'édition

• Date d'édition: 2003
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0743257235
• ISBN 13: 9780743257237
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 400
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible