Why Is Tony Blair Such an Avid W. Bush Supporter?

Great Debates
1

George W. Bush:
[ul]
[li]Ultraconservative (surely even his supporters realize this).[/li][li]A war hawk (ditto).[/li][li]Very right wing.[/li][li]A Republican, and thus a member of the establishmentarian right wing party of the U.S.[/li][/ul]

British Prime Minister Tony Blair:
[ul]
[li]Ultramoderate (or so they say in the U.S.–I’m not absolutely sure what they consider him in Britain).[/li][li]Left wing.[/li][li]A Labour Party leader, and thus a member of the establishmentarian left wing party of the U.S.[/li][/ul]

And yet Blair supports Bush, at least in his war efforts in Iraq. Am I missing something here? Why would even a moderate liberal support Bush? And does Mr. Blair feel doing this is in any way at odds with his party and political views?

:slight_smile:

2

I’m sorry, obviously Tony Blair is a member of the establishmentarian party of Great Britain. I copied and pasted what I had for Bush to save time, and neglected to change that part with the rest :wink: .

3

How can someone be extremely moderate??

4

Is Blair “left wing”? Hardly. He’s a cuddly Thatcherite. Labour wouldn’t have won in 1997 after 4 Tory election wins unless he had dumped the traditional socialist/statist/corporatist baggage. Of course, that means it’s not “Labour” any more.

He is currently dismissing calls for action against outsourcing to India/China etc, saying it’s an inevitable part of globalization. Bush and Kerry are more “left wing” than that.

Like Bush, Blair is pretty religious, and sees things in a good vs evil way (even if he articulates it in a more sophisticated manner). His attitudes towards terrorism, WMD, etc are unyielding - he’s not a “European” in the American sense of a stereotype, concilatory dove.

Many in his party dislike his pro-Bush stance - more due to instinctive anti-Americanism than doveishness - but many Tories agree with it. Labour supporters who disagree with him can’t vote for another party at the next election, unless you count the Lib Dems - a third party.

So he gets away with it - the son of Maggie runs the “Labour” party.

5

They like the same toothpaste.

6

Blair isn’t ‘Left’ by any European standard, nor is he particularly ‘Left’, I’d suggest, in comparison with US Administrations of a few decades ago – what’s happened is that the US political frame of reference has shifted in recent times so that what used to be plain way-out-there-wacko is now ‘Conservative’. In other words, it ain’t the rest of the world that’s shifted.

Anyway, by all sensible measures, Blair is the classic, pragmatic centrist.

Onwards: Why does Blair support Bush on the issue of Iraq ?

Even more curious when doing so has damaged him personally and his Party, and went against the popular will (according to polls) of the British people – all of that was known in real time and nothing came as a ex post facto surprise.

Well, a politician only ever acts for/considers one of three reasons; it’s in his personal interest, it’s in his Party’s interests or it’s in the National interest – every single thing any politician does can be smelted down to reference at least one of those factors.

In the case of Iraq, Blair concluded – this before the Jan 2002 State of the Union Address – that it was most seriously in the UK’s long-term national interest to support US Foreign Policy. This is not rocket science; every single Prime Minister of every political persuasion since Suez has followed exactly the same policy (exempting Harold Wilson on the issue of Vietnam – he told the US to sod off when they wanted UK involvement).

To support US Foreign Policy initiatives allows the UK to punch far above it’s real diplomatic weight/economic strength/military capability on the world stage; it gives UK views greater import and influence, our military is better placed and more highly skilled to be of value to the so-called ‘world community (including the UN) and we broker all kinds of deals for just about every other nation on the planet.

Italy – with a similar-sized economy and population - we aren’t. When did anyone ever listen to what Berlosconi had to say ? Or Germany, even.

The irony is, of course, that in believing he was doing the best thing in the nations long-term interests, Blair damaged himself and his party so very much with the people in who’s interests he believed he was doing what he did.

I have no doubt Blair sees himself as having nobly sacrificed himself on behalf of an ungrateful nation, but that history will eventually redeem him.

7

Tony Blair is closest in political belief to Bill Clinton. They’re both center-left politicians, moderate and willing to compromise to get things done.

Why is Blair so strongly in support of Bush? He isn’t really. He sides with the EU on many issues. The Bush Administration would like to have a transatlantic alliance with Britain in it, and have Britain move away from the EU. Blair’s not interested.

What Blair is, however, is a strong believer in the war. Not only did he believe the same WMD evidence the Bush administration did, but his government was actively pushing that theory as much as the U.S.

But Blair is also a moralist, and believes that the war was the right thing to do for the Iraqi people.

So they were staunch allies on the Iraq war, because they both believed in it. On other issues, not so much.

8

And what London_Calling said.

9

Can’t remember who said it, but someone once mentioned that British politicians have tended to be supportive of the United States, regardless of who was President or what the policies were – just a general-purpose tactic of “staying on the big dog’s good side.”

You think that’s what prompted Blair to stick by Bush during this whole fiasco?

10

I think Iraq war is the only thing those two agree on. I read some speeches by Blair in which he goes for pages in praise of Labour social programs that must be complete anathema to Bush. Blair was painted as “Bush poodle” lately, but I think that after 9-11 he spoke about necessity of decisive military actions before Bush did. May be Blair is what we call a “liberal hawk”? He was one of the organizers of Kosovo intervention; I remember when Clinton started losing popularity in the polls during Kosovo, he complained that it was the British (meaning obviously Blair) that got him involved into this.

11

I didn’t vote for him, and I don’t realize this. For better or worse, by American standards, he’s center-right. (Haven’t you noticed all the threads about conservatives being frustrated with him?) Blair would be center-left. Neither is a “wing” politician, and because of that, they can work together on centrist issues like national security.

12

No matter what he really thinks, he’s stuck with the Dubya line now. If he is ever forced to admit he was that badly wrong, he’s out, and he must know that.

13

<blink- blink> Did Sam Stone just agree with London_Calling?! <rubs eyes>

14

I thought it was because of the old “special relationship” between the two countries?
Also, if we are using the double axis political spectrum, “New Labour” (gotta love the use of spin even in the name of the party) is practically at the same point as the Thatcher Government.

I wonder if there would be a meaningful change should his socialist economist G Brown take the party lead?

I’m guessing not…just more taxes.

15

‘Special relationship’ my arse. Where did you get that from, the mid-Atlantic Daily Friggin Mail ? Just empty, transparent pro-US/anti-Europe propaganda.

The US has one special relationship and that’s with Israel. The rest is akin to what Lord Palmeston said around 150 years ago about the Britsih Government during empire, to paraphrase: “The US does not have friends, it has Interests”.

The UK supprts the US out of preceived self-interest, and the US does what it does for identical reasons. As does everyone else.

16

Before looking at the other replies I’ll answer this as a Brit who was baffled by the very same situation. I had a high opinion of Tony until his support of GWB.
My guess is - He had no choice. It was the lesser of two evils.

17

Blair pushed his WMD ‘evidence’ because Bush asked him too. It was obvious that everyone was going to question Bush’s motives, so he asked Blair to take on the task of high-brow justifications while he did the job of the tub-thumping.

Hmmm, funny how this wasn’t mentioned as justification prior to the war, isn’t it? It’s only since the non-existant WMD melted away like dew on a July morning that we’ve got to hear just how much Blair and Bush cared for the Iraqi people. I’m sure they must be quite touched.

They both believed in the economic advantages of geting rid of Saddam. Bush especially. Blair just hitched his wagon to the passing war train and Bush was glad to have the company. London_Calling nailed it, following in the US footsteps is convenient and a well-worn policy that currently suits both countries. But it isn’t going to work forever, sooner or later one or other is going to slip up, then we’ll see just how ‘special’ that relationship is.

Blair is impatient to be loved and remembered. He wants whole chapters in the history books about him. This means he went for the big play, he gambled that they would be proved right about the WMDs and Britain would be second in line at the trough when the oil riches got divided. It’s a gamble that’s failed, the war may have benefited the Iraqis but the justifications for it were a sham and everyone knows it. The world is not a safer place and the threat of terrorism has risen.

Blair will suffer for this come the next election, but whether he suffers enough to lose is a different matter. The Conservatives are still a joke and the Lib-Dems just don’t have the clout. I wouldn’t be too surprised, though, if things turn further for the worse, that the Labour party might yet dump Blair as a liability. Gordon Brown isn’t as much of a populist, far more cautious, and is much less likely to gamble all on a throw of the dice like Blair did. The US will discover then that the UK isn’t half as likely to fall into line with its escapades.

18

Nope. You have been around too many of these threads to not know that Blair just before the war issued 6 points to Saddam to halt war. They were all about WMD. If these were answered Saddam could remain in power and Iraq would have been left alone according to him.

Blair only “cared” about the Iraqis when his “45 minute” claim fell on it’s arse for several reason the main one being that there were no weapons in the first place.

19

It is really hard to say where Bush is right now politically speaking.

When he ran his campaign in 2000 no one was saying he was a “hardcore conservative” quite the opposite actually, he was called a moderate conservative. Just as Al Gore was called a moderate liberal. Prior to Bush taking office him and Gore really weren’t that different.

Both were pushing for welfare reforms (both going for conservative reforms, Bush’s was more conservative than Gores), both support the death penalty, both were fairly non-interventionist as far as global issues go, and both were fiscally fairly conservative. Back then the Bush tax cuts were the answer to a budget surplus, not something suggested when the U.S. budget was running in the red.

Up until 9/11 he certainly was not what one would call a Neo-Conservative like Rumsfeld or Powell. Bush was very very isolationist in his foreign policy stances. He opposed a great majority of all U.S. interventions from Vietnam up until Kosove excepting primarily the Gulf War.

As his presidency has progressed Bush has basically become a man of every political ideology right of center.

Originally a moderate conservative he’s basically morphed into some amalgamation of most popular conservative trends.

He’s neoconservative in that he now supports preemptively dealing with issues abroad.

He’s traditionally conservative in that he wants privatization not socialization.

He’s traditionally conservative in that he wants religion to play a bigger part in society.

I’m not sure how to classify his fiscal explosion. Originally a fiscal conservate Bush now basically is repeating Reagan: spend much, tax little. I guess that is taking the SPEND out from a tax and spend liberal and the lower taxes of a fiscal conservative (without appropriate lowering in spending.)

Bush is currently undefinable. I wouldn’t say he is a far right conservative though. Far Right Wingers are people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

20

With all due respect to the general worthiness of your post, if you are

a) lumping Rummy and Powell together as philosophical suitemates
b) calling either one of them Neo-cons

you are listening to people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
God, I hope that if Bush loses that the word “neo-con” will disappear from the earth. Of course, they’ll just substitute some other catchphrase and use it to describe every Dem from Lieberman to Kucinich.