WHO'S THE EMBARRASSMENT?:

'When ya gettin' rid of him?': Tony Blair has become an embarrassment to Labour's natural allies across the Atlantic - the Democrats (Mark Seddon, August 20, 2004, The Guardian)

Out on the stump in Brooklyn with Democrat Congressional hopeful Frank Barbero came a chance to talk to the footsoldiers in an election that all agree is the most important in decades. America is polarised between red and blue - or, as some Democrats whisper, between progressive America and a revived Confederacy.

With George, the Vietnam vet turned transit worker, and Jeff Gold, the eternally optimistic full-time organiser, we leafleted passersby outside Tiffany's Diner, a hangout for hangover recoverers on any Sunday lunchtime. "The response is good this time," said Jeff. "It's close, it's important and everyone knows it. It's also beginning to turn dirty." But Barbero, who helped drive the Mob out of the docks as a union man, had one question for me: "Tony Blair! When ya gettin' rid of him?"

If it is holiday time for Blair, it must be Silvio Berlusconi's brash Sardinian villa, or an occasion for Downing Street staffers to mull over the fun idea of inviting the Iraqi placeman and former Ba'athist Ayad Allawi to visit Labour's conference - and then mercifully thinking better of it.

But, sadly, there appears to be little such enthusiasm or public support for the Democrat hopeful, John Kerry. Sophisticated commentators and campaigners are aware of the distinction between government and party. They understand that, as prime minister, Blair cannot weigh in personally behind Kerry. But many of those I spoke to in New York last week wondered about Blair's choice of friends and how he became trapped into supporting Bush and the neocons on Iraq.

He may not have governed that way but Bill Clinton at least ran on the Third Way. Now George Bush owns that turf and John Kerry is running as a kind of LBJ/Great Society throwback. Why would Tony Blair support a guy who wants to do to America all the stuff he's undoing in Britain?

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 20, 2004 12:51 AM