Labour's love lost

[randy_byers]

Or How Britons came to hate Tony Blair and America, and why the next prime minister will pay the price. Fascinating article by the British journalist Andrew Brown in Salon about the prospects of a post-Blair Britain. (I've linked to the print-friendly version in the hopes that you'll escape the need to watch an ad that way.) Here's the final paragraph:

The Conservatives were rendered unelectable for a full decade by their seething, rancorous hatred of Europe, which was Thatcher's legacy and which drove the party into a civil war. Labor may choose to destroy itself over the question of anti-Americanism. The joke is that in both cases, all that is at stake are gestures. What else can we do with our economy but trade with Europe? What else can we do with our army but fight as American mercenaries? Perhaps Blair's real failure was not that he offered his services to the White House, but that he never charged enough.

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

What Bush should say to Blair is my favorite line from Animal House:

You fucked up--you trusted us.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

It's interesting to try to imagine a scenario in which Blair refused to join the invasion of Iraq, but I find that I'm incapable of it. Would Bush have had to work harder to get a consensus in the whole Security Council? Or would he have just forged ahead with Poland and Italy and the rest as the only figleaf?

I'm not sure that Blair actually trusted Bush. I think he thought he had no choice.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The other choice would have been to get himself called a surrender monkey.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

True, but the surrender monkeys aren't looking so dumb these days, and they've got good cheese!

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I liked the comment about Britons hating Blair for showing them that they were part of someone elses empire.

Perhaps it explains why Howard has managed to get away with even more reprehensible capitulation to the Bush agenda with less backlash -- Australians have always been part of someone elses empire, the only thing that has changed in two centuries is whose empire it is. If Howard was forced to really choose between the UK and US that might have the potantial to create a party destroying backlash, but its not happening under Blair.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, when I was reading The Australian website regularly, I was intrigued by the ways in which the Howard government was negotiating with China independently of US interests. I seem to recall a moment at which Downer signaled that Australia would not necessarily back Taiwan if push came to shove. But in a lot of ways it seemed that Howard was bucking to be Sheriff of the Pacific, or something, at least as far as the islands are concerned.

[numbat.livejournal.com]

Australia has a long tradition of wanting a zone of influence of its own but still wanting to be a part of somebody else's empire. This goes back even further than tyhe country does. Before Federation Queensland actually annexed New Guinea but was forced to relinquish it by (I assume) the Foreign Office in London. It's claimed that resentment at this interference was one reason for the push towards Federation. The problem is these two desires don't mesh terribly well but that's never stopped the push to establish dominance over the South Pacific.

[numbat.livejournal.com]

There is very little in that final paragraph that I would agree with. The Tory Party has been unelectable because they couldn't find policy differences with Labor to sell themselves on, New Labor has run itself like a conservative government and pulled the rug out from under their feet. In this context the matter of Europe is given prominence not because it's an issue that polarise the nation but because they couldn't find anything better to be totally at odds with the Labor government about. That the Tory Party currently is itself polarised over Europe is quite possibly due to Thatcher but any use of the Europe question is more an excuse to weild any sort of weapon in the scramble to fill the vaccum at the top of the party. The debate only continues to be an important issue while nobody holds onto the top job securely.

What can Britain do but trade with Europe? Given how tiny British commerce with Europe is compared to trade with the USA it's a non-question. How closely Britain ties itself to the rest of Europe will only make a marginal difference to the British economy. What alse can Britain do but fight for the US? He could have adopted a friendly but neutral stance, refused to go without ruling out the possibility of leading the peacekeeping efforts after the war was over.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting point about British trade being greater with the US than with Europe. If it's true, it would almost seem to imply that the reason the British fight alongside the US is to protect their investment. On the other hand, I've thought since 2003 that it would be ironic if Bush drove Britain into the arms of France. Yeah, I know, not bloody likely

[numbat.livejournal.com]

I assume it's true because it came up on a BBC radio documentary I listened to a few months back. As I understand it the UK and the US are heavily enmeshed at the banking/insurance/investment/etc level so that while the UK trades goods with the rest of Europe it trades in higher finance with the US. In which case I suppose you can claim it's about 'protecting investments' though that works both ways I suspect.