JPod, if you can find any description that I have actually used of Tony Blair that really describes him as a “crypto-fascist”, I shall be most surprised. But then you never fail to surprise me. That Blair has an unhealthily strong authoritarian streak is denied by almost nobody who knows the slightest thing about British politics. As for what I think about Putin, I have posted not once, but twice in the last two days, about how he is very far from criticism for his domestic policies, and, on many other occasions, I have criticized him for his approach in what Russia so arrogantly calls ‘the near abroad’ as well as for his attitudes to the Soviet past.

But, as you like to say, oh so often, get real. Putin is a key potential ally in the struggle to head off Iranian nuclear weapons. In case, you haven’t noticed, we need allies in that respect. If, on the other hand, you want the US to stand alone, or alongside a handful of the righteous, very well then, but I’ll expect to see you call for more Cheney venom to be directed at Egypt, China, Pakistan and many of the other countries who we are now trying to woo/keep on side. And don’t get me started on the relationship between George W. Bush and Saudi Arabia, the continuing source of so much of the extremist ideology that is poisoning this world, and a country that is far less free than Putin’s Russia.

Diplomacy is about reality, John. It’s not a moral crusade. It is not about utopian dreams. It is not about re-making the world. It is about national interest. And only that. Or at least it should be. And sometimes that means dealing with people of whom you don’t always approve. Cheney’s speech was, I’m afraid, a blunder. He would have done better to remember Churchill’s words after Hitler’s invasion of the USSR meant that the UK found itself allied with the mass-murdering Stalin: “If Hitler invaded hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil.”

Similarily, I have always given credit to Blair (and no, John, just so it’s clear to you, I don’t think he’s a devil or even a crypto-devil) for much of what he has done internationally in the war against Islamic extremism: domestically (as the growing shambles in ‘Londonistan’ and elsewhere shows), that’s an entirely different question.

Churchill or Cheney, J-Pod, you choose. I’ll go for Churchill.