London’s bridge is falling down

Kendall Myers, a senior US state department analyst, has called the Anglo-American relationship “one sided” and implied that Blair was essentially an idiot for wasting his time. Some choice quotes:

It was a done deal from the beginning, it was a onesided relationship that was entered into with open eyes… there was nothing. There was no payback, no sense of reciprocity… We typically ignore them and take no notice — it’s a sad business… What I think and fear is that Britain will draw back from the U.S. without moving closer to Europe. In that sense, London’s bridge is falling down…

Kendall, a British politics specialist – and thus, I’m guessing, an Anglophile – admitted to feeling “a little ashamed” at the way Bush treats Blair.

I’m about as pro-American as anyone you’ll find on the British left, and I agree that the Bush-Blair relationship is a sick joke. But… I think Myers has misunderstood the PM’s motives on this one.

What, I would ask, was the alternative to what we’ve seen over the last six years?

I don’t mean what else could Britain have done. I mean, specifically, what could Blair?

Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 there’s been heated debate in Britain about exactly what Blair should be asking for, in exchange for his support. A deal on climate change? Another push for peace in Gaza? Trade benefits?

But… I don’t think Blair has ever seen the relationship in those terms. It’s much simpler – and much scarier – than that. He believes this stuff. He’s always pursued an activist foreign policy – remember Kosovo? – and he was pushing for something to be done about Saddam when Clinton was in charge. (Clinton, bless his little cotton socks, wasn’t that stupid.) He is, in a way, a neo-con.

So asking what Blair wanted in exchange for invading Iraq is a meaningless question. It’s like asking what Tom Cruise would want in exchange for accepting an Oscar.

Does he get listened to in the administration? Probably not. But then, the Rumsfield-Cheney axis have never shown much interest in listening to anyone from outside their own clique. I bet he still gets heard by policy makers more clearly than, say, Jacques Chirac, though: “Not much” beats “Bugger all.”

As to the other side of “London’s bridge”… With the exception of Ted Heath, Blair has probably been the most pro-European prime minister Britain has ever had. He was in favour of the Euro; he agreed to the EU constitution; he has said in the past that the idea of Britain having a future outside Europe is essentially inconceivable.

That Britain hasn’t moved closer to Europe despite that enthusiasm seems, to me, to be due to both popular antipathy to Brussels, and genuine differences in outlook between Britain and much of the continent. The British largely believe in market economics and nation states; the French largely believe in European integration and the French social model.

Given those inherent differences, I’m really not sure what “moving closer to Europe” is supposed to look like. But the fact that Britain is now part of an identifiable block of liberal EU economies, rather than some kind of isolated freak state, has got to be a good sign, right?

Blair’s foreign policy has been a disaster; he has no real influence in the US; and if there is a core group of European countries, Britain is clearly not part of it. On all those points, Myers was right.

But for Tony Blair – for a man of his convictions – what was the alternative?

13 comments
  1. G. Tingey said:

    I deny Blair’s benign intentions, given his crawling to any and all the religious lobbies.

    Yuk

  2. Jonn said:

    I deny Blair’s benign intentions, given his crawling to any and all the religious lobbies.

    I agree that it’s not a healthy way of running a government. But I think, in Blair’s mind, that’s a perfectly benign way of doing things: he’s a practicing christian, presumably to him religion is inherently good unless abused (eg terrorism).

  3. What Blair could have done is held back from picking the British taxpayers pocket to fund an illegal war, concentrated on not wrecking the NHS, transport, education, the NHS, the benefits system, broadcasting and the NHS (he would not have succeeded because he’s a wanker who has never lived on planet reality but he could have tried)and at least retained a few sheds of dignity as J Chirac has done (and he’s a known crook – in Blair’s case the proof is still being gathered.) In other words he could have remembered that his job is to serve the British people not the American administration.
    And if the smarmy git had to suck up to somebody he could have sucked up to India and China and gained something from it.
    BTW saying you’re a leftie then indicating support / sympathy for the ultra right Blair is a non sequitur.

  4. Jonn,

    “Kendall, a British politics specialist – and thus, I’m guessing, an Anglophile -“

    Yup. you’re guessing.

  5. SK said:

    Three years ago I might have agreed with you. I started off disliking Blair — focus-group led, vote-chasing little weasel that he seemed to be. Then over Iraq I though that finally he’d found a backbone. He was going to do something unpopular, just because it was the right thing to do. Even though it might lose him votes.

    Since then, thought — and especially recently — it has become clear that my initial assessment of him as a cipher with few to no opinions of his own, who would do anything to be popular, was accurate. I just made a mistake about his constituency. He doesn’t care about what voters think, except insofar as he has to in order to get elected, in order to carry out his real agenda. No, everything he does — absolutely everything — is based on how he wants to appear in the history books.

    He wants to be the man who solved education, the man who solved crime, the man who started the process of bringing democracy to the middle east and the man who brought peace to Northern Ireland — no matter who he has to tread on, drown in paperwork, or simply sell down the river.

    He feels the hand of history upon his shoulder? He’s been reaching out for that hand, seeing almost nothing else since he became leader of the party, and it’s that tunnel vision which has meant that he’s now seeing his Grand Plans to secure his lasting memory crumble against current, practical problems that simply didn’t register on his horizon-fixed view.

  6. Let’s drop all this ‘neo-con’ nonsense and call him what he is: a fascist.

    He believes in the merging of state and corporate power, aggressive war, detention without charge or trial, restrictions on free speech, restrictions on assembly, national identity registers, total surveillance. Oh yes, and he’s a traitor to boot.

    Godwin’s Law in action!

  7. Reverend Lovejoy said:

    Blair has probably been the most pro-European prime minister Britain has ever had. He was in favour of the Euro

    Then why has he done bugger all about it? Nine and a half years in power not long enough?

  8. James R MacLean said:

    Mr. Thorpe, you might actually have something relevant to say about the original post if you bothered to read it first.

    Jonn wrote this:

    But… I don’t think Blair has ever seen the relationship in those terms. It’s much simpler – and much scarier – than that. He believes this stuff. He’s always pursued an activist foreign policy – remember Kosovo? – and he was pushing for something to be done about Saddam when Clinton was in charge. (Clinton, bless his little cotton socks, wasn’t that stupid.) He is, in a way, a neo-con.

    So asking what Blair wanted in exchange for invading Iraq is a meaningless question. It’s like asking what Tom Cruise would want in exchange for accepting an Oscar.

    Does that sound like Jonn is defending Blair’s attitudes and beliefs?

    To repeat: Jonn believes (and so do I) that Blair does these things for no other reason than that he actually has drunk the Kool-aid himself. The oft-repeated allegation that Blair is a Petainist is nonsense. Pres. Arroyo of the Philippines, who is totally dependent for her career on the illustrado class, eventually discovered she could say no to the White House. Leaders such as Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium as well as Chirac & Schroeder were vocal in their opposition. Leaders such as Berlusconi (Italy), J.M. Aznar (Spain), M. Barroso (Port.), A.F. Rasmussen (Denmark), and J.P. Balkenende (NL), plus various Central European ones approved of the invasion. Finally, leaders like Kjell Bondevik of Norway and Costas Simitas of Greece were muted.

    I think it’s actually very silly to insist that anything bad has to have been done by an American or else a non-American coerced by Yanks. In fact, I think it’s a form of right wing populism, rather closely analogous to “Bushism” out of power. If one has difficulty understanding analogies, then I can explain.

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