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Politics marxism Tony Blair Trotsky

What Tony Blair should be saying about Trotsky

The former prime minister has confessed to a student flirtation with revolutionary Marxism. At least he grew out of it

By Oliver Kamm  
August 10, 2017

Photo: Victoria Jones/PA Wire/PA Images

Tony Blair, it turns out, was inspired to enter politics under the intellectual influence of the Bolshevik revolution. In a BBC Radio 4 interview, he disclosed that his life was changed when, as a student, he read the first volume of Isaac Deutscher’s biography of Leon Trotsky. Though Blair acknowledges that his flirtation with Marxism was brief, he stresses its transformative impact on his thinking: “I suddenly thought the world’s full of these injustices and here’s this guy Trotsky who was so inspired by…

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Oliver Kamm

Oliver Kamm is a leader writer and columnist for the Times. Mending the Mind: The Art and Science of Overcoming Clinical Depression is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (£16.99)

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