Leo Abse (1917–2008)

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In this hard-hitting and highly controversial book, reforming parliamentarian Leo Abse presents a remarkable and timely analysis of Tony Blair, architect of New Labour and the man likely to become Britain's next prime minister.
In a powerfully penetrating and forthright investigation of Blair's psyche, Abse deploys his psychoanalytical scholarship to consider the forces and influences that have driven Blair. He examines the house of secrets in which Blair was reared, where the promiscuous grandmother forever cast a shadow, where the illegitimate stricken father - authoritative, ambitious and politically unstable - dominated the household, and where death unfairly invaded the family domain. Abse goes on to show how the traumatic events of Blair's childhood left him a loner, an estranged man who first sought to resolve his private dilemmas in rock music and religion and then, belatedly, in politics. Forever fearful of stirring up the unassuaged aggression caused by his earliest bitter experiences, Blair, Abse argues, has reserved that aggression for those in the Labour Party who mock his illusory dream of a Britain re-born without pain and strife - a conflict-free society governed by a consensus that will, if necessary, be ruthlessly imposed by diktat.
Dramatically contrasting the unconscious drives that have brought Blair to the leadership with the positive motivation of John Smith and Labour's two genuinely charismatic leaders, Hugh Gaitskell and Aneurin Bevin, this veteran socialist's powerful call to resist Blair's hijacking of the Labour Party will bring courage to all those witnessing with dismay the debasement and betrayal of Labour's traditional values.… (meer)

(10 March 2012)

And so we complete my trio of ambivalence. I was looking forward to this one – a psychoanalytical study of Mrs Thatcher by a Welsh Labour MP (brother of the surgeon-poet, Danny, to whom I gave my youthful poetic oeuvre at a poetry reading in Tunbridge Wells in the 1980s, I shudder to admit). He’s a good, solid Freudian, although he does engage with the post-Freud psychoanalysts, especially the feminists, and this informs the most interesting chapters on the effect that weaning, potty training, etc. had on the infant Mrs T. He tells his tales with a little glee, I feel, and I certainly felt a bit gleeful reading them, too, although he is at pains to point out that he pities Margaret for her harsh upbringing, even as he criticises her for letting it have its influence on her politics and reign.

All well and good, and his Freud is solid and his arguments well-mustered and impressive. Unfortunately, the book is bolstered with a big chapter on Keith Joseph and Enoch Powell, and another all about spies, with only tenuous links to the subject at hand, and I’m afraid I did skim a little there. Also, he seems to have some rather odd views on the origins of homosexuality in people; informed by his Freudian paradigm of nurture not nature, and to be fair it’s not clear if he applies this theory to all gay people or just some who “become” gay, but it makes uncomfortable reading in this age of less Freud and more understanding of the nature side of things. So again, a good book in parts.… (meer)