What makes Mr Blair look lonely in his bottom-right box is the absence, now that Mr Mandelson has gone, of a single senior colleague who shares both his economic beliefs and his vision of political strategy.

ECONOMIST: Politics

For most of the cold war, Mr Pipes was a lonely ploughman.

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It struck me as a lonely odyssey, but Mr. Boss says he has plenty of support, starting with Phil Schrader, editor and publisher of the Sovereign, a small circulation monthly specializing in news about the surveillance state and UFOs.

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Mr Campbell concludes that it was more probably a lonely time, during which the grocer's daughter made a few contacts as president of the Conservative Association but may have read little and was traumatised by the snobby condescension she met from the progressive young things at Somerville College.

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Mr Herring said the most common issue they found was people who were lonely or had been left behind by friends.

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That "horn" is the trumpet with which Mr. Alpert climbed the pop charts first with "The Lonely Bull, " the garage recording he made in 1962 after hearing the sounds of a Mexican bullfight, followed by a string of singles in the '60s with his band, the Tijuana Brass.

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But as Mr Brown is already discovering, and will discover more over the next few years, it can also be lonely.

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But Mr Blair, along with the Liberal Democrat leader, Paddy Ashdown (see article), has always been pretty lonely in that.

ECONOMIST: Politics