Posted on 08/01/2004 9:22:10 PM PDT by Brian Allen
It was a peculiar group that slipped, quietly, into a restaurant called Upstairs on the Square, near Harvard University, for lunch last Tuesday. Over hamburgers and crab cakes, Pat McFadden, Tony Blair's political secretary, chatted amiably with Robin Cook, one of the Prime Minister's harshest critics. The Liberal Democrat Charles Kennedy, Sir Menzies Campbell and Lord Razzall exchanged pleasantries with Matthew Doyle, Labour's chief press officer.
Had they known about the event, Labour backbenchers might have suspected a secret attempt to renew the Lib-Lab pact. In fact, the eclectic collection of politicians, brought together in Boston by a Liberal-leaning lobbyist, had only one thing in common: a desire to learn lessons for British politics from the Democratic Convention. As they discussed the implications of a Kerry victory for Mr Blair and the repercussions of a Bush win for Michael Howard, one conclusion was clear: whatever happens in the United States in November will speed back, like a ricocheting bullet, to the British general election next year.
There is an agreement across the political spectrum in Westminster that this presidential election is the most important for decades - both for America and for the rest of the world. The most powerful country on the globe has a stark choice between different moral and cultural values (on issues such as abortion, gay rights and the environment). It also has to decide whether to continue with George W Bush's policy of unilateralism, or to try the more multilateral approach from John Kerry, a choice that will determine the way in which the whole world operates during four crucial years.
The American election will also have more influence on a British general election than any previous US contest. The war in Iraq, the fight against terrorism, the nature of leadership and the question of trust will dominate next year's campaign in this country just as they have run through this year's battle on the other side of the Atlantic. Mr Blair has associated himself so closely with Mr Bush that the outcome of the November poll will have a direct effect on the result of the general election in the spring.
Usually, there would be no question that the Labour government would want its "Third Way" American allies, the Democrats, to win. But the war in Iraq has complicated everything. There are some Labour strategists who think that a Kerry victory could damage Mr Blair's own chances when he goes to the polls next year. If Mr Bush becomes the second pro-war leader to lose power (after the former Spanish prime minister, José María Aznar), then his main ally, Mr Blair, will look increasingly isolated. The Prime Minister's position will be further weakened if John Howard, the Australian premier and final member of the "Gang of Four" war leaders, is ousted in October. "Three down, one to go" is the slogan already being prepared by the anti-war lobby.
The Democratic candidate found himself in a curious position last week, implicitly criticising a Labour prime minister as much as a Republican president - when Mr Kerry promised to take America to war only "because we have to" not "because we want to", the barb was as wounding to Mr Blair as it was to Mr Bush.
Most ministers, however, believe that a Kerry victory would actually make Mr Blair's position more comfortable in the run-up to the general election. Downing Street advisers are bemused by the extent to which the Prime Minister misjudges the public mood about America. "Tony doesn't understand how much the British people hate Bush," said one. "He thinks it's anti-Americanism but it's much more specific than that."
For cultural as well as political reasons, the British public cannot stand the gun-toting Texan, Mr Bush. The Prime Minister would find it much easier to persuade British voters of the virtues of the transatlantic alliance if a more consensual leader were in power.
Ministers who have never been comfortable with their leader's cosy Colgate relationship with the Right-wing Republican are privately desperate for the Democrats to win power again. These instincts have caused tension in the Cabinet.
Jack Straw, responsible for the Foreign Office line that Labour must remain neutral in order not to offend the current US administration, is trying to ban government members from endorsing the Democrat campaign. However, with the tacit approval of Number 10, other ministers are quietly forging links with the Kerry camp.
Douglas Alexander, Labour's general election co-ordinator, was buzzing around the convention last week, and Peter Hain is planning to visit the Democrats in the next few days. Gordon Brown is in constant touch with Bob Shrum, Mr Kerry's chief strategist. Meanwhile, Mr Blair is being urged by his closest Cabinet colleagues to distance himself from Mr Bush. "Supporting the right policies matters more than diplomacy," one Blairite member of the Cabinet told me.
When Britain goes to the polls next year, the normal allegiances will be reversed. The Conservatives will play the role of the Democrats, criticising an incumbent Government which took the country into a controversial war. Mr Howard will try to exploit loss of trust in Mr Blair in the same way as Mr Kerry promised to "restore trust in the White House" last week. Like the Democrat candidate, the Tory leader will have to shake off a wooden, unpopulist image.
Liam Fox, the Tory chairman, is trying to persuade Mr Howard to take a more emotional, less "cerebral" approach.
Labour, meanwhile, will be in the same position as the Republicans, trying to justify its decisions to a sceptical public. Military might does not win votes in this country as it does in America, but Mr Blair will, like
Mr Bush, try to exploit growing public anxiety by emphasising his position as a strong leader and his commitment to national security.
The next Parliamentary session will be dominated by legislation designed to show Labour's commitment to tackling terrorism, controlling asylum and dealing with the local security issue of anti-social behaviour. At the same time, Labour will accuse Mr Howard of "flip-flopping" over the Iraq war, after he said he would not now vote for the Commons motion on military action, just as the Republicans have highlighted Mr Kerry's mixed record on the fight against Saddam Hussein.
Whatever the outcome of the American presidential election, the parallels for the British general election are clear. The result in November will be far more important for British politics than the recent local and European elections. In an age of globalised trade and globalised terror, democracy has become globalised too.
For cultural as well as political reasons, the British public cannot stand the gun-toting Texan, Mr Bush. >>
So the slimy-limeys -- the while being swept away with the rest of the morbidly-ingrate Europeon Neo-Soviet's sorry satellite statists' swirling spiral down history's gurgler -- delude themselves.
The self-loathing frenzy created within every one of them by their effectively-psychotic, envy-motivated, rage-engined and hatred-driven pathologically-hesperophobic anti-Americanism so deludes them that they believe the American Man who so perfectly epitomises all of US and so perfectly illustrates the difference between our Living FRee Republic and their dead and decadent fasciSSocialist satellite state is other than the focus of their all-consuming hatred of our Nation and of the success that so perfectly reminds them of their own abject failure.
And every-bit-as-abject irrelevance.
ping
Brown is the real danger to both the UK and to any north Atlantic alliance.
May all Bush-hating lefties choke miserably on their own bile for ever.
,,, imagine that? Bush has managed to stir passions, for better or worse, beyond the realms of the woyal family, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspurs and potato crisps and warm beer.
Hey, Arsenal are worth getting bothered about! :-) *LOL*
Soon enough. The delusion that keeps them from doing so right now will last only another 3 months. ......to the day.
Though Blair is so unpopular right now I do not think that Bush failing to be reeleceted will change a thing.
What's right doesn't matter anymore. It's all boiled down to strategy.
, the British public cannot stand the gun-toting Texan, Mr Bush.
*****
Has GWB ever "toted" a gun?
Beyond this article being a pile of crap, the President doesn't just drop his freinds because of some opinion poll and a bunch of BS.
I am sure this will not be the last time we read an article like this one. It is almost like this author wants America to appease the Brits. Funny.
What is more important is why the Brits riot after soccer games.
<< ,,, imagine that? Bush has managed to stir passions, for better or worse, beyond the realms of the woyal family, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspurs and potato crisps and warm beer. >>
The Gunners?
Spurs?
Nah.
Threats that any of them might actually have to work for his dole and non-delusionally-fantasized and/or realistic critiques of Fulham are what really get the endemically-alcoholic barmey hooligans and predatory and serially-mendacious morons pulling on their bovver boots!
[And the beer's actually pretty bloody yummy.
Especially thanks largely to the concept of the mini-brewery they are busy importing and/or otherwise second-handing.
FRom America and New Zealand ]
Blessings -- B A
BUMPping
<< What is more important is why the Brits riot after soccer games. >>
That one's easy:
Generations of fetal-alcohol-syndrome inducing endemic Alcoholism.
<< I am sure this will not be the last time we read an article like this one. It is almost like this author wants America to appease the Brits. Funny. >>
Funny?
Nah.
More like "sad."
As is readily recognizable from the serially-sneering tone in which many of FReeRepublic's FReeloading brit regulars address US all, [And hurl bigoted hyperbole and mindless epithets and mount gang-style personal attacks at those of US who give as good as we get] the brits believe themselves to be our cultural, intellectual and moral-integrity superiors and -- when they are not actively demanding our appeasement -- to get seriously snooty if we refuse to kowtow and/or, much worse, throw their inane and banal faux "superiority" in their long-ago-soundly-whipped supercillious faces!
For more than a hundred years now our presence on the planet makes it impossible for the poor losers to delude themselves as to their position in the pecking order.
[They're peckees]
The Telegraph is seriously losing the plot, this Rachel Sylvester is a Telegraph political hackette, not a guest writer.
One can only hope that now the Barclay twins have full control, idiots like this will be shown the door, otherwise the paper is going down the same sewer hole the Tories are in.
no offense asshole, but GWB isn't going to lose
I didn't get past the third paragraph of obvious propaganda...
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