Is Tony Blair a secret muscle fan?

[CelticMuscle]

Tony Blair who was re-elected last week has just completed his Cabinet reshuffle and is creating a new peer of the realm who when he is addressed in the House of Lords will probably raise a few eyebrows among their lordships.

His name is Andrew Adonis, and as such will be referred to as Lord Adonis of Oxford. This is a profile of him from the Guardian:

Andrew Adonis is something of a bogeyman to many in the education establishment and the Labour backbenches. As 10 Downing Street's education policy advisor he's had a heavy influence over some of the Blair government's most controversial initiatives: city academies, top-up fees, more power to parents over schools and less to local education authorities.

So the rumours reported over the weekend that Tony Blair is attempting to parachute him into the number two position in the Department for Education and Skills, covering schools standards, will send shivers down many spines this morning.

But other senior school figures say that if you get to talk to him, he's extremely open to ideas and keen to hear from the professionals. The problem is that as a No 10 advisor, he can't talk to the press and has no remit in public life, despite having a lot of influence. And he does have influence: two years ago a Guardian survey named him the eighth most influential figure in the public sector.
Adonis was Oxford educated despite humble beginnings. His father was a Greek-Cypriot postman and trade unionist. He has been an academic - he was a Nuffield fellow and a journalist at the Financial Times (where among other things he covered education) and a columnist for the Observer. He joined the No 10 policy unit in 1998 and became its head in 2001, aged 38, before stepping down in 2003 to concentrate on education.

He's seen as the moderniser, with the radical vision for change which Blair is looking for. He's championed the term "excellence" in education - which is sprinkled throughout the five-year plan for education and in schemes such as Excellence in Cities. Tellingly, Roy Hattersley and Ted Wragg are among the education commentators to have laid into him in print.

Most controversially, he was widely rumoured to have contributed to the resignation of Estelle Morris from the education secretary job because he was so interfering in her department.

But in political terms his appointment would be as explosive as it would within the education sector. The former SDP activist and editor of the book Roy Jenkins: A Retrospective would not go down well with the backbenchers, some of whom have been starting to whisper about Blair's resignation over the weekend.

Even if Blair's dream of giving him a front of house job is over for now, Adonis will certainly remain a key thinker trusted by the prime minister. But other senior education players suggest that his "bogeyman" status is a product of the backroom job he's had and that giving him a job out in the open would make him more accountable and would properly recognise the power he already has.

[UKBeefy]

I thought the article Celtic was going to say he was an amateur bodybuilder or something. I presume you mean his name - I would imagine there are a fair few Greeks with the same surname. You do get some real beefy greeks/cypriots - at the most recent contest I went to on Sunday what was noticeable was how many ethnic minorities of all types were into bodybuilding. In fact few of the competitors especially below seniors had "white English" names.

[brent]

But how will all this help PM Blair succeed in his 3rd term as the Bush family's lackey?