My native-born American friends cannot understand my (let me put it as nicely as possible) lack of enthusiasm for Tony Blair. Well, here is today’s Daily Telegraph on Blair’s policy towards Northern Ireland, saying the same things I have been saying on NRO and elsewhere these past several years.

“How, then, did Sinn Fein win so many votes in 2003 — including those, we are told, of at least some members of the McCartney family? And how did it come to win them at the expense of the SDLP, whose peaceful pursuit of a nationalist Ireland is much more in tune with most voters’ wishes than the bloodthirsty methods of the IRA?

“The answer to those questions is given by Seamus Mallon, the former deputy leader of the SDLP, in his interview on page six today. Put brutally, Sinn Fein owes the strength of its power base to the immoral stupidity of the policies pursued by Tony Blair’s Government. Mr Blair ‘wiped out’ the middle ground in Northern Irish politics, says Mr Mallon, by constantly doing secret deals with Sinn Fein behind the SDLP’s back. When the SDLP asked for concessions from the Government, Mr Blair paid no attention. When Sinn Fein asked – and backed up its demands with the threat of a renewal of the IRA’s bombing campaign – the Prime Minister was only too willing to oblige. No wonder nationalist voters came to believe that the best way to get what they wanted was to give more power to the gunmen, and to desert the moderates whom Mr Blair ignored.

“When he signed the Belfast Agreement, Mr Blair spoke of feeling the ‘hand of history’ on his shoulder. We must wait and see how history will judge a British Prime Minister who, unlike the brave McCartney family, has yielded at every turn to the IRA.”