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 t's
nice to be British at the moment. Prime Minister Tony Blair has
been getting high marks from Americans for the loud and clear support
he has given to George W. Bush's war on terrorism. After his two
powerful speeches about the war — at his own party's annual conference
on October 3rd
and in Parliament on
the 4th — the London Sunday Telegraph did a telephone
poll over here. They found that 81 percent of Americans who had
heard of Blair had a favorable opinion of him, while 41 percent
of the same group would vote for him if he ran for president. Now
that hostilities are actually under way, with British planes and
submarines as part of the attack force, and also, one presumes,
British commandos on the ground in Afghanistan, I imagine this spirit
of solidarity and mutual admiration will wax ever stronger. I myself
have been basking in the reflected glow from these sentiments. Many
readers have e-mailed me to say how much they appreciate Britain's
standing by the U.S. in these times, and I thank them collectively
(which I am afraid will have to do — I am hopelessly behind on e-mail).
Neighbors and acquaintances have chimed in with words of gratitude.
It's nice. The burning of the White House in 1812 seems to have
been quite forgotten.
Now, you know
me — not the type to rain on anybody's parade, least of all when
the parade's waving and cheering at me as it passes my house. I
don't want to be a wet blanket on the war effort, either, which
has my whole-hearted support, and which I believe must succeed if
my children are to grow up in a civilized world. I would, though,
just like to throw in a couple of words of caution about Blair,
his party, and Britain in general.
I am a Conservative
as well as a conservative, so Blair's party isn't mine. I know it
well, though; all my relatives in England are Labour voters. I am
the lone Tory — "the blue sheep of the family," as my
sister says. Most of my English friends are Left, too; they are
mainly intellectuals and small-time academics, with the ideological
déformation professionelle that goes with that kind
of work nowadays. Like the Democratic party over here, Britain's
Labour party endured a long spell out of office, from which it was
able to emerge only after giving itself a makeover. Following Tony
Blair's ascension to the leadership of the party in 1994, Labour
changed itself from being a coalition of old-line "means of
production" socialists, pacifists, labor unions (dominated
now, in Britain as in the U.S., by those from the public sector),
"lifestyle" activists and "green" intellectuals,
to being a neoliberal "third way" party with sufficient
general appeal to win elections. Where did the socialists, peaceniks,
tax-eaters, feminists and tree-huggers go? You're not supposed to
ask that. Suffice it to say that they all learned, from years in
the wilderness, that fine words butter no parsnips, and that great
advances for the "progressive" cause — not to mention
lots of the kinds of jobs that come with a chauffeured limousine
— can be achieved by keeping your mouth shut in public while uniting
behind a telegenic centrist who is attractive and unthreatening
to the apolitical middle classes.
A lot of these
people were choking on their tea and crumpets listening to Blair's
speeches in support of the war. Those not actually pacifist are
generally anti-military and anti-American. Furthermore, huge numbers
of the Third-World immigrants who have been pouring into Britain
this past forty years are Muslims — from Pakistan and Bangladesh,
mainly — and the leftist middle classes who form the backbone of
the Labour party organization look down on them from the lofty heights
of moral superiority with a blend of multi-culti paternalism and
post-colonial guilt. (This is not to mention the fact that those
immigrants provide a jobs program for large parts of Britain's urban
lumpen-intelligentsia — Labour voters to a man, woman, and
transgendered individual — in the way of Community Relations Liaison
Officers, ESL teachers, welfare workers, and so on.) Things are
not quite as bad as in the Vietnam War, when Prime Minister Harold
Wilson made all the right noises on behalf of Lyndon Johnson but
dared not commit any troops for fear of an uprising by his Labour
party rank and file. Still, Blair can only take his party so far
on this one, and we do not yet know how far that will be.
Then there
is Tony Blair himself. I am going to come right out of the closet
here and declare that I believe Blair to be a bag of wind, who is
likely to deflate suddenly if pricked by adversity. The evidence
for this is in Northern Ireland, where he sold the 1998 Good Friday
agreement to the majority Unionist population on the clear understanding
that terrorist militias would be obliged to give up their arsenals
of weapons before being allowed to participate in normal politics.
That understanding has been grossly, shamelessly, and outrageously
violated. Terrorists, including many who are guilty of the most
unspeakable crimes, but released from long jail terms as part of
the agreement, are now gathering their forces to resume the unholy
war that agreement was supposed to end. Blair's only reaction has
been to lean ever harder on the only people he has found amenable
to pressure — law-abiding Unionists — while dangling ever more concessions
and favors in front of those who have never given an inch — the
hard-core terrorists. It is possible that Blair will prove more
resolute in prosecuting action against the terror networks of the
Middle East than he has against the psychopaths of Belfast and Dundalk.
Still, the evidence of his Northern Ireland policy seems to me to
be that he has always moved in whatever direction is most likely
to reduce the possibility of terrorist attacks on mainland Britain,
without much regard for the consequences in Ulster. If I am right
about that, its relevance to the present situation is obvious, and
not very encouraging. (Or, to put it another way, very encouraging
indeed for any terrorists who have come to the same conclusion about
Blair as I have.)
And finally
there are the people of Britain, the generality of whom like America
and feel a fondness for, and kinship with, Americans, but who increasingly
see their future in Europe. In the first of those two speeches that
so impressed you Yanks, Blair also declared his determination to
take the U.K. into the single European currency "in this parliament,"
which is to say within the next four years — a decisive and irreversible
turn towards political integration with Europe. He made happy noises
about "a strong Britain, rock solid in our alliance with the
USA, yet determined to play its full part in shaping Europe's destiny...,"
but everyone understands that this is an either/or.
So I am watching
with pride and satisfaction as British troops, British ships, and
British planes engage the enemies of civilized life in co-ordination
with our American cousins. It is early days yet, though. If, as
President Bush has assured us, and as he really seems to intend,
this is going to be a long and dogged struggle, then we can be sure
that there are many more tests for us ahead. I have no doubt Americans
will face up to those tests with the courage, patriotism, and determination
they have been showing since September 11th. I believe my countrymen
will, too, under honest, resolute, and principled leadership. Is
Blair the man to provide that leadership? I honestly hope so, having
no stake, emotional or otherwise, in any other outcome. I look at
Blair, though, and I look at his party, and I even sometimes look
at my countrymen, and... Well, I truly hope so.
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