 Hitchens asserts that the reforms facilitated vast and radical constitutional change under Tony Blair's new government that amounted to a "slow motion coup d'état".The book was cited by Gillian Bowditch in "The Times" as being a major modern work to dissect "the decline in British morals and manners over the past 50 years", and identified by Andrew Marr in "The Observer" as "the most sustained, internally logical and powerful attack on Tony Blair and all his works".Hitchens's later book "The Broken Compass" explored the same themes, applied to socio-political events and culture in the 2000s decade.