May 1, 2005
CAUTION:
Blair will win, but he'll still take a beating (MARK STEYN, May 1, 2005, Chicago SUN-TIMES)
Blair's is a cautionary tale. Unlike George W. Bush, who wanted to topple Saddam because he wanted to topple Saddam, the prime minister felt obliged to square it with his deference to progressive hooey like ''international law,'' so he framed the case against Saddam in technical legalistic terms such as the threat Iraq presented to British bases in Cyprus, only 45 minutes away as the WMD fly. The narrow legalisms proved to be untrue, and Blair has paid a much higher price for that than Bush has.There are millions of Americans who take the view that there's no such thing as a bad reason to whack Saddam. So, even in the worst slough of his 2004 media despond, Bush still had the support of his party, Congress and half the American people. The British prime minister, by contrast, went to war with tepid support from his party, parliament and people, and, despite winning said war, has managed to lose support with all three groups in the two years since. In particular, his party -- viscerally anti-war and mostly anti-American -- loathes him. The most tortured moment in political interviews is when some Labor candidate is asked whether he or she supports Blair and after a long pause replies through tight lips, as Yasmin Qureshi did this week, ''He is the leader of the party at the moment.'' Blair may be a global colossus but back home he's the lonesomest gal in town. The problem with the war on terror is that once it was framed as an existential struggle for Western civilization, it was all too predictable that the left would act as it did the last time we had one of those, the Cold War: They'd do their best to lose it.
I feel rather sad about this. At one level, Tony Blair is an absurd figure: In the jurisdiction he's supposed to be governing, the hospitals are decrepit and disease-ridden, crime is rampant in the leafiest loveliest villages, in the urban areas politics is fragmenting along racial and religious lines, and the IRA have been transformed with the blessing of Blair's ministers into the British Isles' homegrown Russian Mafia. But, in the jurisdictions for which he has no responsibility, Blair flies in and promises to cure all. He's particularly keen on Africa: Genocide? AIDS? Poverty? Don't worry, Tony's got the answer. He can't make the British trains run on time, but he can save the world.
By the time this election was called, the British had fallen out of love with Tony Blair. Unfortunately for the Conservatives, they haven't fallen in love with anybody else. But, in the artful way of highly evolved political systems, the electorate are doing their best to signal to the prime minister that this Thursday's "five-year mandate" is in fact one year's notice. As a matter of practical politics, the French referendum on the European Constitution later this month will be much more decisive than the UK's own general election when it comes to determining how Britain is governed. If the French reject the ludicrous Euro-constitution, they'll be rejecting it for Britain too. If they sign up for it, it will probably be a fait accompli for the British -- and the final stage of the submersion of America's closest ally in a European superstate increasingly hostile to Washington will be under way.
James Bennett has had great success in recent years promoting the concept of the ''Anglosphere.'' I'm all for it. L'Anglosphere, c'est moi, pardon my French. I divide my time, as the book jackets say, between Britain, America and Canada. Throw in Australia and New Zealand and you've got the only countries who were on the right side of all three of the 20th century's global conflicts.
In his book, Allies, William Shawcross makes it clear just how little George Bush cared about WMD, the UN, etc., but how vital they were to Tony Blair. The President drove his more hawkish aides crazy by repeatedly giving Mr. Blair, and Colin Powell, time to try and drag the international community along. Finally, Mr. Blair got the fright of his life when the President told him not to worry about it if the British couldn't fight with us, we'd be happy to go it alone. The only thing worse for Mr. Blair than not having UN support was not supporting America. His heart's in the right place, if not always his head. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 1, 2005 9:53 AM
oj, you don't say. Do you believe Blair will just squeak by too?
Posted by: erp at May 1, 2005 2:52 PMI think if the Tories had offered a viable conservative alternative they'd have beat him. But if they're ultimately pro-war, pro-Europe, pro-National Health, etc., then why bother voting against Blair?
Posted by: oj at May 1, 2005 2:59 PMBlair was the triumph of style over substance, not unlike Clinton. His party chose him to lead, not because they agreed with him, but because they believed he could win the election. When he did, he wrote his own obituary as all the Old Lefties still were lurking in the background. He has provided no coherent program to oppose the Old Lefties in the party and benefits from the world's dopiest opposition party, the British Conservatives.
He will win re-election by a handsome margin and gradually leave the stage to Brown. The Brits will return to their traditional hatred of everything American, and hopefully we will react by treating Old Europe, including Perfidious Albion, with the disdain it has so richly earned for the last 5 centuries of human history, turning our back on them and looking towards Asia and Latin America.
Posted by: bart at May 1, 2005 3:59 PMBart should really back off of bashing England. It was England that, among many things, ended the slave trade and gave us our political underpinings. If it made mistakes over the years, these mistakes were much less than the rest of Europe. Compare former English colonies to those of France and other continental nations.
Posted by: Bob at May 2, 2005 10:05 AMHe's pro-French, of course.
Posted by: oj at May 2, 2005 10:12 AMFrench colonies are far better off than their English counterparts as a rule.(English colonies which were inhabited primarily by First Worlders are not under discussion here) They suffer from far less tribalist nonsense and have much stronger national unity, education, middle classes and prospects.
England did hornswoggle us into WWI, a war where if anything we should have supported Germany, and given the war's impact on world history I think it is fair to say that this far outweighs any benefit we might have received from the nation that invented the planned famine(Ireland 1840s), germ warfare(Pontiac's Conspiracy) and the concentration camp(Boer War).
Posted by: bart at May 2, 2005 11:37 AMWhy are none successful?
Posted by: oj at May 2, 2005 11:49 AMWhat French colonies are we talking about? Vietnam? Algeria? Quebec? I'll take their Anglospheric counterparts (India, Egypt, the rest of Canada) any day of the week. The only reason England has more screwups is that England had more territory.
Posted by: Timothy at May 2, 2005 4:20 PMTunisia and Morocco are in lots better shape than Egypt. Gabon, Cameroon, Senegal, Mali, Niger, even Congo-Brazzaville are in better shape than Uganda, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and the other sub-Saharan British colonies without large White populations, with the minor exception of Botswana.
Much of India is still a disaster. Do a Google search on Bihar.
Canada is populated by First Worlders and hence irrelevant to the discussion.
Posted by: bart at May 2, 2005 7:30 PMMali and Uganda are doing as well. Morocco and Tunisia have the advantage of being Arab and Muslim and Morocco has the great benefit of a king, consistent with Britisgh but not French politics.
Funny how you have to exclude all the truly successful colonies.
Posted by: oj at May 2, 2005 7:41 PMThe truly successful ones have a different population. You cannot compare how the French dealt with gibbering savages, with how more or less civilized Brits handled empty territory, like Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the US and Canada. It's apples and oranges.
Thus, the proper point is to compare Morocco or Tunisia with Egypt and Sudan. Advantage France. The various nations of sub-Saharan Africa show a marked French advantage, in terms of literacy, per capita income, an absence of tribal and religious strife, etc.
Even in Canada, Quebec is far better off than the Maritimes, and Quebec is not blessed with the mineral resources of the Western Provinces.
Posted by: bart at May 3, 2005 9:17 AMPopulations don't matter, systems do. The British works. The French doesn't.
Posted by: oj at May 3, 2005 9:49 AM