Blackpool, England
“THE BASIC VALUES of America are our values too . . . and they are good values.” To Americans, that statement by Prime Minister Tony Blair, in his speech to last week’s annual Labour party conference, sounds uncontroversial, even banal. But to many of the rank-and-file members of his party, any praise of America, especially in the context of a statement of support for our position on Iraq, is praise too far. As the Financial Times put it, “they listened politely if sulkily.”
“They” include delegates who still address one another as “comrades.” Many support the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (Tony Blair is the most famous former member), which wants Britain to abandon its nuclear Trident submarines and which claims in one of the leaflets handed to delegates that “the only state to unconditionally support an attack [on Iraq] is Israel.” Others want to stop fox hunting; have joined with Emily’s List to demand that the party select replacements for retiring members of parliament from an all-women shortlist; and, more sensibly, are lobbying for a reduction in taxes on Scotch whiskey, “an international sales success for the UK.”
The day before Blair took to the podium he was forced to withdraw a resolution backing the use of military force in Iraq, lest he be handed a humiliating defeat by the delegates. And a motion opposing war in any circumstances, even with United Nations support, was defeated by only 60-40 percent. So Blair had to settle for a resolution that endorsed action against Iraq only with the blessing of the U.N.
Or so it seemed to the delegates, who grudgingly compromised to allow adoption of what they saw as a middle ground position, and one that moves Britain out of the American orbit and into the sphere of the much-admired U.N. Privately, the prime minister says the language in that resolution permitting him to act in accordance with international law gives him enough wriggle room to back America even if the U.N. “bottles out” (English for “chickens out”). He plans to do so, even though his top officials tell me the political consequences will be dire.
I kept notes on the applause lines in the almost hour-long speech in a meeting hall so hot that Blair thanked its owners for arranging a sauna. Blair regaled the audience with a chortle about Europe’s victory over the U.S. golfers in the Ryder Cup, and then added, “Me and George Bush on different sides.” Long applause, prompting the prime minister to joke, “I knew you’d like that.”
The balance of his remarks were designed to persuade his audience that his support of President Bush is principled, and not a matter of reducing Britain to the status of an “American poodle,” as his critics charge. “My vision of Britain is not as the 51st state of anywhere, but I believe in this alliance [with America] and I will fight long and hard to maintain it, because it is in the interests of this country.”
Blair continued with an attack on the resentment of America that was palpable among the trade unions and their allies in the hall: “The Americans stand strong and proud, but at times resented. . . . It’s easy to be anti-American. There’s a lot of it about, but remember when and where this alliance was forged: here in Europe, in World War II, when Britain and America and every decent citizen in Europe joined forces to liberate Europe from the Nazi evil.” This got more than polite but somewhat less than enthusiastic applause.
The crowd’s enthusiasm was reserved for references to working within the U.N. (failure to act “will destroy not the authority of America or Britain but of the United Nations itself”); to fighting poverty so as “to give Africa hope”; to nation-building in Afghanistan; and to some, but not all, references to the Israeli-Palestinian war. “I agree U.N. resolutions should apply here as much as to Iraq”–long, loud applause. “But they don’t just apply to Israel. They apply to all parties.” Not a sound.
So Tony Blair faced an audience best described as violently opposed to having Britain back the United States should we move against Saddam without U.N. sanction; reluctantly willing to go along with such a move if it has U.N. blessing, the unspoken thought being that military action is highly unlikely once the U.N. gets involved; and generally in agreement that a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict should come before any action in Iraq.
NO ONE WAS FOOLED by the obligatory standing ovation Blair received after his speech, which the government officials I spoke with thought was too pro-American. After all, he had defended America and the values it represents in the strongest possible terms, made clear that maintenance of his nation’s “special relationship” with America remains at the core of British foreign policy, and argued that Britain’s interest and his own sense of morality required his country to support American efforts to disarm Iraq. It was undoubtedly wise of him to reject the suggestion of one of his more playful advisers to begin his speech by addressing the delegates, à la FDR, as “My fellow Americans.”
He also told the trade union leaders, many of the recently elected ones out to give him what one described as “a f–ing migraine,” that the old socialist system, and the party’s subservience to the unions, is a thing of the past. “Out goes a culture of benefits and entitlements. In comes a partnership of rights and responsibilities.” The government will continue to rely on private-sector financing of new schools and hospitals, even though the delegates overwhelmingly voted to abort that program.
Blair knows how to count. And his count showed that the trade union delegates, who dominate the conference and whose members produce the public services (health care, transportation, and education), are opposed to all reforms, whereas the unaffiliated delegates from the constituencies, the consumers of public services, voted two-to-one for continuing to use private funds to improve the delivery of those services. And there are more consumers than producers in the country, if not in the Blackpool conference hall.
So a cynic could defend Blair’s call for domestic reforms as pragmatic. But not his support of America against Iraq. That’s costing him politically. When Britain went to war at America’s side in 1991, tens of thousands of Labour party members resigned, gashing a hole in the party’s budget; many more are said to be threatening to do so this time around. Even the delegates at the party conference, the hard-core loyalists, were decidedly unenthusiastic. Several of his cabinet members are muttering about resigning if he joins America in an attack lacking U.N. authorization.
The Blairites are counting on the fact that the prime minister is a vote-getting phenomenon who has reduced the opposition Tories to electoral impotence. (The Tories helped out by assuming that a softer, kinder image is more likely to restore them to power than is adherence to conservative principles.) The Blairites know, too, that for all the talk of resigning, his ministers are reluctant to give up their salaries, government cars, overseas junkets, and other perks by bringing Blair down over the mere matter of war and peace. But should he back America in the absence of a new U.N. mandate, and should the disarming of Saddam (regime change is a goal not even Blair dares to openly defend) prove a protracted and bloody affair, the knives will be out. After all, the very weakness to which Blair has reduced the opposition might tempt Labour dissidents to believe their party can hold onto power led by the formidable chancellor and heir apparent Gordon Brown, whose lavish spending on the public sector and notable lack of support for the prime minister’s pro-American position on Iraq have made him the darling of the Labour left.
So why can’t Blair be more like the French, and find a clever way of seeming to support disarmament of Iraq while at the same time removing the threat of force that would make such disarmament possible? Or more like the appalling Gerhard Schröder, who managed to forget what Blair cannot–America’s contribution to the downfall of Hitler’s government–in the name of electoral popularity? Or more like Bill Clinton, who addressed an adoring conference (before descending on the local McDonald’s) and bravely called upon all of us to work for regime change in Iraq “in non-military ways”? (BBC radio reports that the old Clinton seductiveness is undiminished by the lack of the formal trappings of office. One reporter, after hearing the former president’s speech, breathlessly told reporters, “I need a fag [cigarette]; I always smoke after I’ve been made love to.”)
The answer to those questions can be found in Blair’s speech to the Economic Club in Chicago on April 22, 1999. He told the audience, consisting largely of businessmen, that “many of our problems have been caused by two dangerous and ruthless men–Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic. . . . Both have brought calamity on their own peoples.” We must, he went on, be guided by a “subtle blend of mutual self-interest and moral purpose in defending the values we cherish . . . the values of liberty, the rule of law, human rights and an open society. . . . The principle of non-interference must be qualified in important respects. . . . Armed force is sometimes the only means of dealing with dictators.”
That speech made public what those who have talked to Blair privately have long known–he has a moral streak that impels him to envision and seek a world order in which the good guys have not only a right but an obligation to stop the bad guys (evildoers, in Bushese) from doing bad things to helpless people. It is Wilsonianism writ large and muscular. There are values of decency, democracy, tolerance, and justice that should be made available to all people, and if that means disregarding national boundaries to right wrongs by using military power, so be it. Self-determination is fine, but “when regimes are based on minority rule they lose legitimacy,” and international intervention is justified. Hence the prime minister’s tough stance in Kosovo, in what many regarded as a civil war in which outsiders had neither the right nor the obligation to intervene.
Clearly, Britain acting alone can’t make the world the sort of place that Blair wants it to be. Hence, his desire to strengthen the special relationship, one that everyone thought would become a thing of the past when Blair’s “Third Way” buddy Bill Clinton ceded the Oval Office to compassionate conservative George W. Bush. Blair’s spontaneous reaction to the terror attacks on America, his shoulder-to-shoulder stance and rushed visit to America to show support, was more instinctive than calculated. It came at a time when his country’s media were seeking to convert victim to perpetrator by blaming the attack on America’s support of Israel. Blair and Bush may have different accents and different styles–recall that after their first meeting at Camp David the only thing Bush could think of that they had in common was their brand of toothpaste–but they share a religious and moral code that causes them to see many things in terms of evil versus good.
Blair knows that Britain cannot take on the Milosevics and Saddam Husseins of the world alone. He also knows that America will not forever carry the burden of policing Europe’s backyard. So he continues what thus far has been a futile effort to persuade his European partners to beef up their defense capabilities so that they can ride to the rescue of the afflicted in their own area of responsibility without relying on America to provide the transport. Germany’s response last week was to announce cuts in its defense budget.
So far, Blair has achieved his goal of becoming a bridge between America and Europe; witness Schröder’s hasty postelection visit to Downing Street to seek the prime minister’s help in reopening communications with the American president his colleagues likened to Hitler and the Roman conquerors. But if the U.N. refuses to approve the use of force in Iraq, and Blair nevertheless remains shoulder-to-shoulder with Bush, he will find himself fighting on two other fronts–with his own Labour party, and with his European allies. My guess is that he is willing to fight those battles, both to preserve the Anglo-American alliance, and to act in accordance with his conscience–that “subtle blend of . . . self-interest and moral purpose” to which he referred in Chicago three years ago.
Irwin M. Stelzer is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, director of regulatory studies at the Hudson Institute, and a columnist for the Sunday Times (London).
Blackpool, England
“THE BASIC VALUES of America are our values too . . . and they are good values.” To Americans, that statement by Prime Minister Tony Blair, in his speech to last week’s annual Labour party conference, sounds uncontroversial, even banal. But to many of the rank-and-file members of his party, any praise of America, especially in the context of a statement of support for our position on Iraq, is praise too far. As the Financial Times put it, “they listened politely if sulkily.”
“They” include delegates who still address one another as “comrades.” Many support the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (Tony Blair is the most famous former member), which wants Britain to abandon its nuclear Trident submarines and which claims in one of the leaflets handed to delegates that “the only state to unconditionally support an attack [on Iraq] is Israel.” Others want to stop fox hunting; have joined with Emily’s List to demand that the party select replacements for retiring members of parliament from an all-women shortlist; and, more sensibly, are lobbying for a reduction in taxes on Scotch whiskey, “an international sales success for the UK.”
The day before Blair took to the podium he was forced to withdraw a resolution backing the use of military force in Iraq, lest he be handed a humiliating defeat by the delegates. And a motion opposing war in any circumstances, even with United Nations support, was defeated by only 60-40 percent. So Blair had to settle for a resolution that endorsed action against Iraq only with the blessing of the U.N.
Or so it seemed to the delegates, who grudgingly compromised to allow adoption of what they saw as a middle ground position, and one that moves Britain out of the American orbit and into the sphere of the much-admired U.N. Privately, the prime minister says the language in that resolution permitting him to act in accordance with international law gives him enough wriggle room to back America even if the U.N. “bottles out” (English for “chickens out”). He plans to do so, even though his top officials tell me the political consequences will be dire.
I kept notes on the applause lines in the almost hour-long speech in a meeting hall so hot that Blair thanked its owners for arranging a sauna. Blair regaled the audience with a chortle about Europe’s victory over the U.S. golfers in the Ryder Cup, and then added, “Me and George Bush on different sides.” Long applause, prompting the prime minister to joke, “I knew you’d like that.”
The balance of his remarks were designed to persuade his audience that his support of President Bush is principled, and not a matter of reducing Britain to the status of an “American poodle,” as his critics charge. “My vision of Britain is not as the 51st state of anywhere, but I believe in this alliance [with America] and I will fight long and hard to maintain it, because it is in the interests of this country.”
Blair continued with an attack on the resentment of America that was palpable among the trade unions and their allies in the hall: “The Americans stand strong and proud, but at times resented. . . . It’s easy to be anti-American. There’s a lot of it about, but remember when and where this alliance was forged: here in Europe, in World War II, when Britain and America and every decent citizen in Europe joined forces to liberate Europe from the Nazi evil.” This got more than polite but somewhat less than enthusiastic applause.
The crowd’s enthusiasm was reserved for references to working within the U.N. (failure to act “will destroy not the authority of America or Britain but of the United Nations itself”); to fighting poverty so as “to give Africa hope”; to nation-building in Afghanistan; and to some, but not all, references to the Israeli-Palestinian war. “I agree U.N. resolutions should apply here as much as to Iraq”–long, loud applause. “But they don’t just apply to Israel. They apply to all parties.” Not a sound.
So Tony Blair faced an audience best described as violently opposed to having Britain back the United States should we move against Saddam without U.N. sanction; reluctantly willing to go along with such a move if it has U.N. blessing, the unspoken thought being that military action is highly unlikely once the U.N. gets involved; and generally in agreement that a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict should come before any action in Iraq.
NO ONE WAS FOOLED by the obligatory standing ovation Blair received after his speech, which the government officials I spoke with thought was too pro-American. After all, he had defended America and the values it represents in the strongest possible terms, made clear that maintenance of his nation’s “special relationship” with America remains at the core of British foreign policy, and argued that Britain’s interest and his own sense of morality required his country to support American efforts to disarm Iraq. It was undoubtedly wise of him to reject the suggestion of one of his more playful advisers to begin his speech by addressing the delegates, à la FDR, as “My fellow Americans.”
He also told the trade union leaders, many of the recently elected ones out to give him what one described as “a f–ing migraine,” that the old socialist system, and the party’s subservience to the unions, is a thing of the past. “Out goes a culture of benefits and entitlements. In comes a partnership of rights and responsibilities.” The government will continue to rely on private-sector financing of new schools and hospitals, even though the delegates overwhelmingly voted to abort that program.
Blair knows how to count. And his count showed that the trade union delegates, who dominate the conference and whose members produce the public services (health care, transportation, and education), are opposed to all reforms, whereas the unaffiliated delegates from the constituencies, the consumers of public services, voted two-to-one for continuing to use private funds to improve the delivery of those services. And there are more consumers than producers in the country, if not in the Blackpool conference hall.
So a cynic could defend Blair’s call for domestic reforms as pragmatic. But not his support of America against Iraq. That’s costing him politically. When Britain went to war at America’s side in 1991, tens of thousands of Labour party members resigned, gashing a hole in the party’s budget; many more are said to be threatening to do so this time around. Even the delegates at the party conference, the hard-core loyalists, were decidedly unenthusiastic. Several of his cabinet members are muttering about resigning if he joins America in an attack lacking U.N. authorization.
The Blairites are counting on the fact that the prime minister is a vote-getting phenomenon who has reduced the opposition Tories to electoral impotence. (The Tories helped out by assuming that a softer, kinder image is more likely to restore them to power than is adherence to conservative principles.) The Blairites know, too, that for all the talk of resigning, his ministers are reluctant to give up their salaries, government cars, overseas junkets, and other perks by bringing Blair down over the mere matter of war and peace. But should he back America in the absence of a new U.N. mandate, and should the disarming of Saddam (regime change is a goal not even Blair dares to openly defend) prove a protracted and bloody affair, the knives will be out. After all, the very weakness to which Blair has reduced the opposition might tempt Labour dissidents to believe their party can hold onto power led by the formidable chancellor and heir apparent Gordon Brown, whose lavish spending on the public sector and notable lack of support for the prime minister’s pro-American position on Iraq have made him the darling of the Labour left.
So why can’t Blair be more like the French, and find a clever way of seeming to support disarmament of Iraq while at the same time removing the threat of force that would make such disarmament possible? Or more like the appalling Gerhard Schröder, who managed to forget what Blair cannot–America’s contribution to the downfall of Hitler’s government–in the name of electoral popularity? Or more like Bill Clinton, who addressed an adoring conference (before descending on the local McDonald’s) and bravely called upon all of us to work for regime change in Iraq “in non-military ways”? (BBC radio reports that the old Clinton seductiveness is undiminished by the lack of the formal trappings of office. One reporter, after hearing the former president’s speech, breathlessly told reporters, “I need a fag [cigarette]; I always smoke after I’ve been made love to.”)
The answer to those questions can be found in Blair’s speech to the Economic Club in Chicago on April 22, 1999. He told the audience, consisting largely of businessmen, that “many of our problems have been caused by two dangerous and ruthless men–Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic. . . . Both have brought calamity on their own peoples.” We must, he went on, be guided by a “subtle blend of mutual self-interest and moral purpose in defending the values we cherish . . . the values of liberty, the rule of law, human rights and an open society. . . . The principle of non-interference must be qualified in important respects. . . . Armed force is sometimes the only means of dealing with dictators.”
That speech made public what those who have talked to Blair privately have long known–he has a moral streak that impels him to envision and seek a world order in which the good guys have not only a right but an obligation to stop the bad guys (evildoers, in Bushese) from doing bad things to helpless people. It is Wilsonianism writ large and muscular. There are values of decency, democracy, tolerance, and justice that should be made available to all people, and if that means disregarding national boundaries to right wrongs by using military power, so be it. Self-determination is fine, but “when regimes are based on minority rule they lose legitimacy,” and international intervention is justified. Hence the prime minister’s tough stance in Kosovo, in what many regarded as a civil war in which outsiders had neither the right nor the obligation to intervene.
Clearly, Britain acting alone can’t make the world the sort of place that Blair wants it to be. Hence, his desire to strengthen the special relationship, one that everyone thought would become a thing of the past when Blair’s “Third Way” buddy Bill Clinton ceded the Oval Office to compassionate conservative George W. Bush. Blair’s spontaneous reaction to the terror attacks on America, his shoulder-to-shoulder stance and rushed visit to America to show support, was more instinctive than calculated. It came at a time when his country’s media were seeking to convert victim to perpetrator by blaming the attack on America’s support of Israel. Blair and Bush may have different accents and different styles–recall that after their first meeting at Camp David the only thing Bush could think of that they had in common was their brand of toothpaste–but they share a religious and moral code that causes them to see many things in terms of evil versus good.
Blair knows that Britain cannot take on the Milosevics and Saddam Husseins of the world alone. He also knows that America will not forever carry the burden of policing Europe’s backyard. So he continues what thus far has been a futile effort to persuade his European partners to beef up their defense capabilities so that they can ride to the rescue of the afflicted in their own area of responsibility without relying on America to provide the transport. Germany’s response last week was to announce cuts in its defense budget.
So far, Blair has achieved his goal of becoming a bridge between America and Europe; witness Schröder’s hasty postelection visit to Downing Street to seek the prime minister’s help in reopening communications with the American president his colleagues likened to Hitler and the Roman conquerors. But if the U.N. refuses to approve the use of force in Iraq, and Blair nevertheless remains shoulder-to-shoulder with Bush, he will find himself fighting on two other fronts–with his own Labour party, and with his European allies. My guess is that he is willing to fight those battles, both to preserve the Anglo-American alliance, and to act in accordance with his conscience–that “subtle blend of . . . self-interest and moral purpose” to which he referred in Chicago three years ago.
Irwin M. Stelzer is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, director of regulatory studies at the Hudson Institute, and a columnist for the Sunday Times (London).
