KERRY DOESN'T SHARE THE FAITH:

Why Tony would vote for Dubya: His advisers have been telling Mr Blair he will be best served by regime change in Washington. The Prime Minister isn't convinced (Andrew Rawnsley, October 24, 2004, The Observer)

When George W Bush's poll ratings recently dipped, every Labour MP cheered. Correction: every Labour MP except one. The Prime Minister fretted to one close friend: 'Whenever Bush weakens in the polls, they start mucking about.'

Who are these 'they' whose 'mucking about' makes Tony Blair so anxious? They are Iran with its sponsorship of terrorism and its ambitions to go nuclear. They are Syria. They are the psychotic regime in North Korea along with the rest of the planet's rogue and risk states.

The mind of Mr Blair was summarised for me in vivid terms by someone who has an extremely good claim to know what is going on inside it: 'Tony thinks the world is a very dangerous and precarious place. Bush is the tough guy who keeps the bad guys under their rocks.'

In seeing virtue in the simplicities of George W Bush, it barely needs saying that Tony Blair is very much in a minority in the world, his country, his govern ment, his party and his cabinet. Every test of opinion tells the same story. Much of the world, many Britons and rather a lot of Americans believe that the planet's most risky rogue state is the United States under its current President. This goes much deeper than visceral anti-Americanism. Middle Britain, the constituency to which Mr Blair is usually most attentive, is overwhelmingly in favour of regime change in Washington. After Michael Howard's falling out with the White House, some Conservative MPs have openly branded this Republican President as a disaster who should be removed from the Oval Office.

Here too you see that it is their religion that binds Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair, their shared belief that Evil and Good are at war in the world and that Western values are good.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 24, 2004 12:05 PM