How Being Bush's Buddie Lost Blair (and Britain) Standing in the World

[BurtWorm]

Excellent analysis of the failure of Blair's foreign policy as seen through the prism of a "Yo!":

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1827058,00.html

...


History dealt him a tricky hand to play in terms of America. It first gave him Bill Clinton, who was ideologically close, but politically shattered and weakened internationally by his scandal-stained second term. Then the American electoral system produced George Bush, one of the most right-wing Presidents to occupy the White House in decades. The Blair line has always been that unswerving support for the White House in public is the price you pay, however unpopular it might be with the British public, to win private influence. Better, in the Prime Minister's view, that Bush greets him with 'Yo, Blair' than with 'Piss off, Blair'.

It is hard to argue that this has served him well in the eyes of either the rest of the world or his own country. Over Guantanamo Bay, over extraordinary rendition and more recently over the extradition treaty, Britain has ended up looking like an unconditional supporter of - at best as an awkward apologist for - the United States.

When the Lebanon crisis was debated in the Commons, there was an extraordinary unanimity among MPs. They were united, across the parties and ranging from those who had been passionately for the war in Iraq to those who had been as passionately against it. MPs were as one in condemning Hizbollah. They were also universally of the view that Israel's crippling assault on Lebanon is recklessly disproportionate and will prove to be utterly counter-productive. Against this consensus stood the lonely and increasingly battered figure of Margaret Beckett, as the Foreign Secretary stuck with the Prime Minister's refusal to show an inch of difference with America. Britain's position lines her up with the United States against the European Union, the United Nations and nearly all of the rest of world opinion. That is because Tony Blair will never even murmur disagreement with the United States. Especially not when he is going to Washington this week.

You can easily see why he calculated that staying close to America made Britain a bigger player in the world. When this prevents his country having a voice of its own during a crisis as serious as this, the effect of being glued to the United States is to make Britain sound smaller than she is.

[rusty charly]

1. "scandal-stained"?

trumped up scandals, right?

republican-fueled attempts to unseat an elected president?

[BurtWorm]

2. kick