BUSH & BLAIR AND PRAY FOR SPAIN:

Why Tony Blair Wants John Kerry to Lose (Joshua Livestro, 4/09/04, Tech Central Station)

There is one European leader...who is extremely unlikely to speak out in favor of John Kerry any time soon. That leader is British Prime Minister Tony Blair. One look at his record shows that he is in many ways the anti-Kerry. Unlike Kerry, his opposition to special interests isn't merely posturing. He has spent a considerable amount of his political capital on a campaign to break the stranglehold of the trade unions on his party. And while Kerry seems to have committed himself to a €900 billion tax increase to fund a range of spending commitments, Blair has campaigned twice on not raising taxes.

Most recently, Blair has waded into the controversy over outsourcing, rejecting the Democrat protectionist position and confirming his attachment to free trade as the only reliable road to prosperity for all. When asked if he wasn't worried about outsourcing, he stated that of course he regretted any job losses. But in a veiled swipe at Kerry and others he continued that for his part he was "not going to pretend I have the powers to stop it." His Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt was even more outspoken in her criticism, dismissing calls for measures against outsourcing as "siren voices" and accusing Democrat politicians of "playing politics with people's jobs and prosperity." She warned them that "protectionism is the road to recession."

These differences, however, are as nothing compared to the major differences over the war in Iraq. On the war in Iraq perhaps more than anywhere else, Kerry's opportunism could stretch the famous "special relationship" between the US and Britain to breaking point.

How peculiar that despite the Clinton presidency--a conscious effort to move them to the Right--we today find the Democratic Party to the Left of Labour.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 9, 2004 7:52 PM