Clare Short MP has been one of the government's most outspoken critics, despite having been a member of it for most of its two terms of office since 1997. Her resignation from the Cabinet over the war in Iraq in 2003 caused a furore -- not least because she had already threatened to go a few months earlier. Why did she delay? Why did she then decide to go? What is at the heart of her reservations about the New Labour style of government, and how does it affect the way we all live our lives? Writing 'more in sorrow than in anger', Clare Short now reveals her thinking about all aspects of the way Britain has been run since 1997. Drawing on her first-hand experience of events at the heart of power, she assesses the true effects of the centralisation of decision-making in Number 10 and shows us how New Labour has contrived to damage the goodwill afforded it by two successive three-figure majorities. Candid and forthright, lucid and thought-provoking, this is a major book about modern Britain.