Posted on 05/08/2005 5:40:39 AM PDT by NZerFromHK
Americans are accustomed to thinking of Britain as their most reliable ally, always there in a crisis. Broadly speaking that has been true since 1941 — and mutual. With the exception of a few wobbles like Suez and Edward Heath's refusal of landing rights to U.S. planes supplying arms to Israel in the Yom Kippur war, the Brits have shared a common approach with the U.S. on defense policy, intelligence cooperation, nuclear weapons, trade liberalization, and much else. Margaret Thatcher's backing for Reagan's Libyan raid and Tony Blair's commitment of British forces to the Iraq war strengthened this habitual cooperation. There was even government-to-government agreement for much of the time on the desirability of Britain's joining the European Union to frustrate any tendency the latter might show toward anti-Americanism. By and large this mix of policies worked well.
It is now threatened, however, by three developments: the rise of anti-Americanism in British politics, a growing anti-Americanism in continental Europe, and the EU's moves toward a common foreign policy. It is the first of these that is the main topic of this article.
Traditional anti-Americanism in Britain has been of two kinds: a left-wing political anti-Americanism rooted in anti-capitalism, and a right-wing hostility based on the decline of British power and the resentment at being displaced by the U.S. Neither was politically important; both were easily contained. But a much more dangerous, complicated, and surprising situation developed in the recent election campaign: Tony Blair's handling of the Iraq war midwifed the birth of a powerful anti-Americanism of the center-Left. . .
I don't really know much about his domestic policy but on foreign policy, he articulates our policy better than any of our politicians. Without Blair's unflinching support Bush and the Middle East would not be going nearly as well. Our "lefties" are nowhere near his stature.
Since I don't expect to require medical care in the UK anytime soon, the war is most important for me. Thus I would support Blair. He can do what he wants to the UK. Or rather, what the folks there will let him do.
As for the Tories, I've had mixed feelings since they dumped Mrs. Thatcher.
We ought to hook up a turbine to Gladstone's grave to capture the power from his rotations - the man who was in favour of free trade and capitalism as a vehicle of progress would be horrified by the modern Liberal Party.
Regards, Ivan
Gladstone was one of the heroees of mine in British history. He is a devout evangelical Christian, and there is no doubt he would fit in well with many American statesmen both in his time and ours. Unfortunately he was infected by some of the leftish transnational progressivism as manifested by Woodrow Wilson and Tony Blair's adulation of him.
I think he quest for Home Rule for Ireland was a foolish thing to do that begot today's Northern Ireland mess. At his time even the most radical Irish nationalists were looking for something akin to devolved Scottish or Welsh assemblies. Had Gladstone not pushed things too far in favour of Home Rule, Irish Home Rule would mature in the Edwardian times and we would still get a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland today with no IRA, no Sinn Fein, no violence as we see in our world.
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I agree with you 100% and IMHO is why Blair has stood with the US he knows on the US can give him a true world platform.
The tories did include Euro skeptic view in their policy statement.
The only comment I can make to your statement is at least the old Labour Party (and I am not fan of them) was anti EC as I grew Conservatives were pro Europe and Labour was anti.
Is that how you rememeber it Ivan?
Agreed
Absolutely Britain cannot accept a radically left one party and the Lib Dems showed themselves to be that.
Ukip scuppered the Eurosceptics
The untold story of the election was the absurdly disproportionate impact of the UK Independence Party. Although their vote may have looked derisory, in no fewer than 26 seats where the Tories narrowly lost, including Harlow yesterday, the Ukip vote was greater than the winner's majority.
If most of those votes had gone to the Tories (a fair assumption) they would thus have won 26 more seats, Labour 17 fewer, the Lib Dems nine fewer. This would have wiped out most of the Lib Dems' 11 net gains, giving them only two seats more than in 2001. Mr Blair's majority would have been cut to a mere 32.
Ukip's net effect may thus have been not only to cost the Tories a swathe of seats such as Battersea, Hove, Torbay and Westmoreland, but to deprive the Commons of strongly Eurosceptic MPs, while assisting the return of Europhiles. In Eastleigh, for instance, Ukip kept out the Eurosceptic Conor Burns, ensuring that it was held for the Lib Dems by Chris Huhne, a rabidly Europhile former Euro-MP.
An unresolved riddle of the 2005 election must therefore be what might have been the result of Michael Howard taking a more robustly intelligent line on the "European" issue, rather than stuffing it away out of sight. If the Tories hope to win next time, this is one of the first lessons they must ponder.
If you look at the actual figures mr Booker has added together the tallies for UKIP and Veritas - however, the effect would probably have been the same.
My recollection is that both Labour and the Tories have both pro and anti EU people. In Labour, you have Tony Blair who is pro-EU, but you also have people like Dennis Skinner (aka, the Beast of Bolsover) who is totally against the EU. Amongst the Tories, there's people like Sir Michael Spicer who wrote a powerful anti-EU book, and Kenneth Clarke who claims to be in favour of further European integration.
Both parties, in my opinion, have been riven with divisions on this one subject for a very long time. Labour in the past decade has overall, had more of the pro-EU persuasion, and the Tories, more of the anti-EU persuasion.
Best Regards, Ivan
Yes I agree in the last decade that has certainly been true which of course would mean today many of those who left the Labour Party for the SDP would know feel at home.
My recollection is that although Margret Thatcher was hard on the the EC she was in fact in favour of membership all her political career.
SHe was in favour of the EU so long as it was a free trade zone - but her later writings show she was against any sort of political union and the creation of a "United States of Europe". She can hardly be called pro-EU in that sense.
The Tories are right to suggest we benefit from trade with the EU. However we should not surrender our laws, our traditions, our representative government to Brussels - too much has been surrendered already.
Regards, Ivan
The historic British Liberal Party imploded probably around WWI. I think the rot was set in when Asquith was the Prime Minister - the Liberals were entering a phase of becoming more socialism-ized which were identical to the routes the then-new Labour Party was following. Another bad news was their free-trade wing was being eaten alive by the Conservatives, which added this faction to the old-fashioned old rural, hierarchical wing.
In fact, had the Labour Party not entered into the fray, it seems the British Liberal Party would still move further to the left and occupy where Labour is in our world's Britain (or like a carbon copy of its namesake in Canada).
Curiously, the historical 19th century British Liberal Party encompasses what the United States's mainstream political landscape looks like. Its conservative wing is where the US Republican Party today is, while its left-wing will be where the US Democratic Party of today lies. In those days the British Labour Party would be to the US Democrats' left, while Conservatives (the High Tory faction) would be to the right of US Republicans.
All countries benefit from fre trade, but just like Sweden Britain buys more from EU countries, than EU countries buy from Britain (or Sweden). We are also net contributors to the EU.
Also, as long as all EU countries are members of WTO we would be able to trade with the EU also as non-members.
That's why I believe that the election last Thursday was relatively unimportant compared to the key vote this month that will have a much larger impact on Britain's future -- and that is the vote in France on the Constitution.
That the French object to the Constitution on completely opposite ground to the British shows how very little "meeting of the minds" there truly is about Europe and the EU. I believe the EU Constitution is not a document that the people of Europe want and agree on, but an attempt by the elites in Europe (really the elites in France and their Belgian poodles) to increase their power. Why Britain would ever want to surrender its sovereignty to men like Jacques Delors and Valerie Giscard d'Estaing is astonishing to me. The goal of such men and the Continental European elite mentality in general is to weaken the Anglo-American relationship and to bring every other country in Europe down to their level of economic incompetence.
Margaret Thatcher was right in her book "Statecraft" - Europe needs the U.K. a lot more than the U.K. needs Europe.
The then Euroepan Common Market architects were clearly following the example of the German customs union (Zollverein) in 1834. In that case they hypothesised customs union created a unified economy which was a preclude to political unification. Had more British people at that time read more 19th century European history they would not have fallen into that trap that was the European Economic Community.
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