Last night the BBC showed, on Newsnight, a report about why Tony Blair is so well-liked in the USA. He is a persuasive debater and arguer. The USA’s right wingers like him because he stood shoulder to shoulder with Bush over the Iraq war, and the USA’s left wingers like him because when he stands shoulder to shoulder with Bush he makes Bush look like a fool by comparison. That kind of thing.
It was a deft move by the BBC. The government have been complaining that the BBC are anti-Government and anti-Blair. Now they can say: look, here was a piece about how well Blair has been doing.
But exposing Blair to the world as being liked by American politicians is to do him no favours with the massed ranks of the Labour Party, parliamentary and out in the constituencies. Those people, by and large, don’t like American politicians, and especially they don’t Like George W. Bush Jnr. When they could think of Bush as just a joke, he was just a joke. But now he’s bad, bad, bad. With friends like him, Blair needs no enemies.
Two Guardian stories have just been punching home the message. This one points out, for all the usual Poltical Editor type reasons, that Blair is now looking wobbly.
But it was another article by an until-now Blair supporter and true believer, from yesterday, that really caught my attention. This paragraph is especially revealing and bullseye-hitting:
The key issue for Blair seems to be his own sincerity. He is desperate to convince us that he believes in the rightness of his actions. This has been a faultline in his personality from the very beginning. It’s instructive, in this context, to consider the ways in which he differs from Thatcher. Thatcher never claimed to be Good, just Right. Blair’s political personality has always been predicated on the proposition “I am good.” His brilliantly articulate impersonation of earnest inarticulacy has all along been tied to this self-projection as a Good Man. He is careful about not touting his religion in public, but he doesn’t need to, since the conviction of his own goodness is imprinted in everything he says and does. It is one of the things he has in common with the party he leads, and one of the reasons people are wrong when they say that Blair is a natural Tory. Thatcher’s sense of being right fits into the Tory party’s self-image as the home of unpopular and uncomfortable truths. Blair’s sense of being good fits the Labour self-image as the party of virtue: the party we would all vote for if we were less selfish and greedy.
It is Blair’s reputation for goodness, among his own most devoted supporters, which has taken such a knock with this Weapons of Mass Destruction business. To people like me, who never believed in Saint Tony in general or in much of the pre-war hooplah about WMDs in particular, the only surprise was why such a canny operator as Blair should have hung himself on such a nasty hook But for the true Blair believers, this stuff is really hurting.
It reminds me of what I vaguely recall someone saying a thousand years ago about Nixon, just before he resigned. If people like this (i.e. some Nixon true believers the guy had just been talking to) think that something very bad has happened, he’s in serious trouble.
My guess is that Blair’s success derives from a peculiar talent that most of us have encountered from time to time in great salesmen: he really believes whatever he happens to be saying at the time he’s saying it. This doesn’t mean he’s stupid, or self-deceiving; just that he’s hollow, all surface.
Of course true sincerity–which he has–is persuasive, if you are even slightly inclined to believe the message. But he is forced to rely on his audiences’ beliefs being as pliable (or vague) as his own or not in conflict with each other. I don’t know that he’s as vulnerable on this ground as rational skeptics might hope: the media-mediated mass of the modern world is no less irrational than LeBon’s physical crowd.
A quibble: George W is not a “junior”. His dad is George Herbert Walker, W. is just George Walker.
Moreover, Al Gore was a junior, son of the long-serving Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee. Okay, I admit it’s not a very interesting fact any more, but it used to be, back before the 2000 election, when Democrats sometimes disparagingly referred to Bush as “Junior”.
Funny how people worldwide have conveniently forgotten the decades of destruction perpetuated by Saddam Hussein. All of this has become about Bush/Blair? Pathetic….but then again…the same rhetoric existed during Hitler’s rise to power and look at what he was able to accomplish. Millions of dead Europeans everywhere!
Ironic that Blair is coming a cropper on the Iraq war issue – it is one of the few things he has done I admired. Just about everything else, apart from not being a disaster on macro-economic policy – has been awful.
The wheels are coming off. Though I am still not quite convinced that Iain Duncan Smith is a plausible Prime Minister, but I would not write him off. Look at unflashy John Howard in Australia – also a baldie – or Staney Baldwin in the 1920s. Both men were trusted precisely because they were not flash.
We have had enough of flashiness from Saint Tony. Dullness is in!
If Tony’s looking bad, that frees him to say what he actually thinks.
Which might not be good for Labor. If I’m going down, I’m taking them with me.
There’s no denying Mr. Blair’s popularity amongst the 60-70% of Americans that support(ed) the Iraq war. Unfortunately, I don’t think Mr Blair would fare so well if that same 60-70% were saavy about British politics (I do not claim to understand it, but I am trying to educate myself on the subject) and Mr Blair’s, um …. contributions. I admire his tenacity regarding the war. However, in my quest to comprehend where he stands on other issues and why, has only led me to more questions
Another quibble: To the British, Bush may seem “a fool” in comparison to Blair. I mean, my God! The Texas address, the southern drawl, the pickup truck, et. al.
But outside of Boston, Manhattan, and the Left Coast, most Americans admire or at least respect Bush. “Liberal” American pundits (not to mention the Democratic party) repeatedly find themselves in a hole by underestimating W. And yet they just keep on digging. Makes you wonder who’s the fool.
Peery
The BBC didn’t say that Bush looks like a fool next to Blair, or not last night anyway. What they did was show Americans on film saying that this is how some American Democrats see it.
Pace C. Cooper, I’m an Republican-voting American who tries to keep up with British politics. And all I can say is, where’s the alternative to Blair?
Kennedy, the Lib-Dem, is a light-weight and probably a nitwit (when he’s sober).
As for Duncan Smith, oh dear. I had the misfortune to read his interview with Mary Wakefield not long ago in the Tory-friendly Spectator. IDS may be a good fellow, but he is woefully ill-informed about rather basic matters. It appears he doesn’t even read the newspapers .
Mr.Micklethwait
We don’t get the BBC in North Carolina.
I think Blair knowingly put his career on the line and went against his own party because he knew what was morally right. I think it’s entirely possible to be a person who can understand the morality of wars against evil dictators, to the extent of being willing to take risks for those principles, and still be an idiot about all sorts of other political issues. I think the war on terrorism is more important than whether we sign a document about Europe next week and do or don’t try to back out of its implications later.
I’m also rather pleased that the Labour party has become so self-assured it thinks it can win elections indefinitely without Blair, whom many people voted for because he was perceived as being right-wing. (Perhaps because of the same moral conservatism that led him to act rightly in the war in Iraq).
If Labour turns against its leader to become more obviously left-wing, the Tories will benefit. New Labour might end up looking like a short-term middle-ground third-way socialism-containment-operation that couldn’t last. Labour will start to look socialist, and the Tories, with their new touchy-feely social policies will start to look moderate instead of evil.
You’re right in all you say, Alice–except perhaps the word “morally”–and…
It looks like they’re turning. The left has always loathed him, quietly or otherwise, but look at this week’s New Statesman. Phew!
Alice’s first paragraph reflects considerable wisdom and insight.
I believe 9/11 shook Tony to his roots (just as it did George W.). While many in Britain were perhaps thinking, “They’ll get the Americans, but not us,” Blair’s perception was less, er, hopeful. If disaster was to strike on his watch, he preferred it not happen while he was asleep below decks.
So I’ve just watched him address congress. Good stuff overall. Playing to the gallery. I’m sure Cherie had to grit her teeth from time to time. However…
…talking about liberty and freedom, as he did extensively at the start, is great as long as you’re not signing away habeus corpus, selective jury trial, implementing id cards and generally pushing the state to intrude into more and more parts of people’s lives.
If Blair wants to survive, he has to cut Blunkett and all the ID-card/biometrics database stuff, and within the next couple of weeks. It’s that simple.
I’m anxiously waiting for you folks to blog on Blair’s masterful, America gushing speech today before a joint session of Congress. This clearly indicates that if some in Parliment, the “British street”, or the continent snear at his close relations with the US, he couldn’t give one witt.
I would not read too much into the gushing tone. Blair has a certain Zelig like quality about him. He has a disturbing habit of changing his accent depending on the company he finds himself in.
As for Blairs morality. I’ll bet that’s as flexible as his attitude to the truth.
Eamon
As for Blairs morality. I’ll bet that’s as flexible as his attitude to the truth.
Maybe you should actually learn something about Blair because you have no idea how deeply wrong you are about him.
So, the guy beleives in what he is doing. Why can’t you shallow people understand?
I think he’s a great statesman, a great guy and a friend who will stand by you regardless of the situation.
The rest of undeserving bastards can run for safety anytime you want. You are not needed.
The only salient fact is that Blair is a committed statist. An honest principled charismatic statist is just as dangerous as a lying unprincipled charismatic statist.
Supporting Blair because of the war in Iraq is like supporting Mussolini because he made the trains run on time.