Peter Cox’s Blog

To dinner with the estimable Martin Bell last night. Martin is Britain’s Walter Winchell - perhaps uniquely for a television journalist (and former MP) he commands great respect and deep affection across a very diverse audience: he is a true British institution.

Martin’s latest book, THE TRUTH THAT STICKS (which I am proud to have had a minor hand in birthing) will be published early next month. “It is about what happened to the dream of New Labour that we were sold,” writes Martin. “What happened to their commitment to honest and open government? Did the legality of their actions, whether in conferring a peerage or waging a war, appear on their radar at all? Why was the trust that we had in this lot - we who also believed in their new beginning - so totally lost as to be irretrievable?”

Martin writes with a passion that millions share: the millions who protested against the Iraq war, and the millions more who gave New Labour their electoral landslide and now feel bitterly betrayed.

I believe it is destined to become the definitive critique of the Blair years.