"Bew is entirely justified in arguing that many of the political stances associated with Blair have deep roots in the party’s tradition. But his belief that this tradition is something to be celebrated and preserved requires him to engage in suppression of inconvenient facts and mealy-mouthed equivocation about the crimes of British imperialism. Citizen Clem was intended to supply Labour’s Atlanticist right with historical ballast. A clear-eyed study of Attlee’s career is all the more important for the Corbynite left as an antidote to rosy-spectacled Labourist sentimentalism for him."

Much to be modest about