In the manner of Margaret Thatcher and Jean Chretien, Tony Blair is being driven from office by rivals, parliamentarians, militants and supporters within his own political party.
It’s hard to recapture the mood of that spring day in 1997, when Blair led the Labour Party to power in the United Kingdom. The people of Britain were in a mood for basic change after eighteen years under Margaret Thatcher and John Major. They had had enough of the new capitalism, with its ravaged public services, privatizations of crown assets that enriched a new layer of the bourgeoisie and the ever widening divide in wealth and power between the Home Counties and the rest of the country.
The new prime minister was youthful, loquacious, and even eloquent when he wasn’t too loquacious. He came to power at one of those rare moments when a prime minister can steer his country in a novel and more progressive direction, counting on the goodwill of a large majority of the population.
The issue that had driven Margaret Thatcher from office in 1990 had been Britain’s relationship with the New Europe. Thatcher had fought the movement toward European economic and political union with every fiber of her being. She detested the idea of Britain being submerged in a European federation. For her, the English Channel was wider than the Atlantic. Her heart and her hopes were invested in the relationship with the Americans, particularly in her close ties to Ronald Reagan and his successor George Bush, the Elder.
When Blair moved into 10 Downing Street, the British were still ambivalent about the European Union and the fast approaching moment when the Euro would be launched to replace national currencies. His ambition was to make Britain the lynchpin in a renewed North Atlantic alliance between Europe and America. He decided initially to keep Britain out of the new Euro zone, but he wanted to align Britain with France and Germany as one of the central engines of the EU.
When the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 were followed by George W. Bush’s War on Terror, Blair allied himself very closely with the occupant of the White House, winning praise from the president as America’s closest friend. To doubters, Blair explained that it was dangerous to leave America on its own to pursue its world policy. By lining up with the U.S. on Afghanistan and most crucially in planning the invasion of Iraq, he believed he could hold America and Europe together.
Instead, Blair and the British ended up as the junior partners in an American imperial enterprise, while the much reviled “Old Europe” of France and Germany opposed the invasion of Iraq. Blair’s conceit that in return for support for the U.S. in Iraq, he could convince the Americans to sign on to the Kyoto Accord and to adopt a less one-sided pro-Israel position in the Middle East, was misplaced. He delivered himself body and soul to Bush’s imperial crusade and got nothing in return. Bush didn’t mind hosting Blair at his Texas ranch and mentioning him in high flown orations on Capitol Hill, but that was the limit. Blair ended up as the Cheshire Cat, a grin and nothing more.
After reported shouted matches yesterday with his likely successor Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown at Number 10, Blair announced today that he will depart as party leader and prime minister within a year. Having led his party to three majority electoral victories all that is left to Blair is the hope that he can complete a full decade in office. The Conservative Party now leads Labour in the polls and polls depict Blair as the most unpopular British prime minister since the Second World War.
What destroyed Blair was a double barreled conceit---that he was strong enough to manage the U.S.-European relationship; and that he could humanize the new American imperial mission to bring “freedom” to the Middle East. As the war in Iraq has dragged on, Blair’s verbose insistence that the Anglo-American mission there has been opening the way for the democracy, the rule of law and human rights has made him appear ever more ridiculous. He has become a man of many words, believed by few.
Since 2003, Blair has been able to sustain himself in office by playing on the British memory of empire, on the idea that Britain should play a large role in the world and that side by side with America it can punch above its weight. In his second inaugural address in 2005, George W. Bush declared that “America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants therof.” With diminishing success, Blair has peddled this missionary line in Britain.
The words are increasingly hollow. But they still pack a punch. Canadians are being urged now to stay the course in Afghanistan for exactly the same vainglorious reasons. There, as in Iraq, the lesson is being slowly learned that western armies are perceived as outsiders, not liberators, and that their very presence provokes insurgency.
It’s hard to recapture the mood of that spring day in 1997, when Blair led the Labour Party to power in the United Kingdom. The people of Britain were in a mood for basic change after eighteen years under Margaret Thatcher and John Major. They had had enough of the new capitalism, with its ravaged public services, privatizations of crown assets that enriched a new layer of the bourgeoisie and the ever widening divide in wealth and power between the Home Counties and the rest of the country.
The new prime minister was youthful, loquacious, and even eloquent when he wasn’t too loquacious. He came to power at one of those rare moments when a prime minister can steer his country in a novel and more progressive direction, counting on the goodwill of a large majority of the population.
The issue that had driven Margaret Thatcher from office in 1990 had been Britain’s relationship with the New Europe. Thatcher had fought the movement toward European economic and political union with every fiber of her being. She detested the idea of Britain being submerged in a European federation. For her, the English Channel was wider than the Atlantic. Her heart and her hopes were invested in the relationship with the Americans, particularly in her close ties to Ronald Reagan and his successor George Bush, the Elder.
When Blair moved into 10 Downing Street, the British were still ambivalent about the European Union and the fast approaching moment when the Euro would be launched to replace national currencies. His ambition was to make Britain the lynchpin in a renewed North Atlantic alliance between Europe and America. He decided initially to keep Britain out of the new Euro zone, but he wanted to align Britain with France and Germany as one of the central engines of the EU.
When the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 were followed by George W. Bush’s War on Terror, Blair allied himself very closely with the occupant of the White House, winning praise from the president as America’s closest friend. To doubters, Blair explained that it was dangerous to leave America on its own to pursue its world policy. By lining up with the U.S. on Afghanistan and most crucially in planning the invasion of Iraq, he believed he could hold America and Europe together.
Instead, Blair and the British ended up as the junior partners in an American imperial enterprise, while the much reviled “Old Europe” of France and Germany opposed the invasion of Iraq. Blair’s conceit that in return for support for the U.S. in Iraq, he could convince the Americans to sign on to the Kyoto Accord and to adopt a less one-sided pro-Israel position in the Middle East, was misplaced. He delivered himself body and soul to Bush’s imperial crusade and got nothing in return. Bush didn’t mind hosting Blair at his Texas ranch and mentioning him in high flown orations on Capitol Hill, but that was the limit. Blair ended up as the Cheshire Cat, a grin and nothing more.
After reported shouted matches yesterday with his likely successor Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown at Number 10, Blair announced today that he will depart as party leader and prime minister within a year. Having led his party to three majority electoral victories all that is left to Blair is the hope that he can complete a full decade in office. The Conservative Party now leads Labour in the polls and polls depict Blair as the most unpopular British prime minister since the Second World War.
What destroyed Blair was a double barreled conceit---that he was strong enough to manage the U.S.-European relationship; and that he could humanize the new American imperial mission to bring “freedom” to the Middle East. As the war in Iraq has dragged on, Blair’s verbose insistence that the Anglo-American mission there has been opening the way for the democracy, the rule of law and human rights has made him appear ever more ridiculous. He has become a man of many words, believed by few.
Since 2003, Blair has been able to sustain himself in office by playing on the British memory of empire, on the idea that Britain should play a large role in the world and that side by side with America it can punch above its weight. In his second inaugural address in 2005, George W. Bush declared that “America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants therof.” With diminishing success, Blair has peddled this missionary line in Britain.
The words are increasingly hollow. But they still pack a punch. Canadians are being urged now to stay the course in Afghanistan for exactly the same vainglorious reasons. There, as in Iraq, the lesson is being slowly learned that western armies are perceived as outsiders, not liberators, and that their very presence provokes insurgency.
1 comment:
Makes you wonder how our beloved UK is taking to the new usage of WWII military rhetoric being made by the Bushnovian neocons.
Best regards to all.
- Anon1
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