The Americanization of a prime minister
By DIANE ROBERTS Special to the Times
Published July 1, 2007
LONDON
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were tight, so tight that during the 1980s Thatcher's critics accused her of pushing the United Kingdom so close to the United States it might as well have been the 51st state.
She treated Reagan with a mixture of deference and nannyish bullying. Like him, she embraced greed-is-good capitalism, hated communism, did her best to cripple the welfare state, and saw the world in terms of Us (good) vs. Them (bad). She assumed her moral compass always pointed true.
Tony Blair and George Bush were another pair of trans-Atlantic best friends, brought together by the 9/11 attacks and what they saw as the need to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Blair and Bush made for strange bedfellows compared to Thatcher and Reagan who were, after all, fellow right-wingers.
Until he stepped down Wednesday, Blair led a party which is, at least on paper, socialist and anti-imperialist. These days, it's debatable if Labor still clings to any part of its old platforms. But whatever their ideological differences, Blair made it clear that he was Bush's man, the best ally a superpower could ever have. As Blair told NBC recently, "It is the job of the British prime minister to get on with the American president."
But in "getting on" with George Bush has Blair "Americanized" British politics a la Thatcher? Blair has often been likened to Thatcher: He transformed the "deepest red" of the old Labor Party into a tasteful pink, just as she lit a fire under the somnolent Conservatives. He did not overturn Thatcher's market-driven economic reforms, and he's been described as her heir, a title he takes as a compliment.
The day Blair officially resigned, the Sun, Britain's largest-selling newspaper, quoted the president of the United States: "I've heard he's been called 'Bush's poodle.' He's bigger than that."
No doubt Bush was trying to be helpful. He goes on to praise Blair and claims, "We analyzed the enemy the same way and found each other in the same foxhole."
"Blair brought the U.K. close to America. He figured that's the only way to influence the U.S., getting close to America and close to George Bush, " says BBC editor John Pienaar.
"He governed more as a president than a prime minister, " says American David Bedingfield, who has practiced as a London barrister 17 years.
Even more than Thatcher, Blair revolutionized British political culture. Like George W. Bush (and, for that matter, Jeb Bush when he was governor of Florida), Blair consolidated power in the executive branch and, more often than not, ignored the legislative branch, chafed at the independent ways of judges, and rode roughshod over his Cabinet. When, as one of Labor's first big moves in 1997, Blair decided that the Bank of England should set interest rates, he was advised to discuss it with his Cabinet. Apparently he said, "Oh, they won't mind."
Remember, Blair was not elected prime minister. Under the British parliamentary system, he was elected representative for Sedgefield, a small, obscure constituency in the northeast of England. As leader of the Labor Party, he became prime minister, but not head of state: That role belongs to the queen. Blair was supposed to be first among equals in the House of Commons. Instead, as one of the tabloids put it, he went "American."
Bronwen Maddox, foreign editor of the Times of London and a noted analyst of the "special relationship, " suggests "Americanized" isn't quite the right word for Blair's political revolution. "There are far fewer checks on a British prime minister, especially one with a large majority in Parliament, than on an American president, " she says. "Blair side-stepped what few constitutional checks we have. I'd call it 'imperial' more than anything else."
No wonder he and Bush got along like a house on fire. Bush seems to hold democracy in contempt: witness those hundreds of "signing statements." When Congress would pass a bill, he'd sign it into law, then issue his own interpretation of the law, essentially rewriting it to suit him.
The campaign of 1997, when the Labor Party won a historic landslide in Parliament and it seemed (not that Blair said this, exactly) like "morning in Britain, " would be easily recognizable to an American.
Most of all, there was the charismatic, charming party leader: "Tony Blair was sold to the British people on the strength of his personality, " says Pienaar. "He built a new politics in the American mold."
With the advantages (if that's what they are) of American-style personality politics, came the problems. Cherie Booth Blair struggled to find a role for herself. There is no tradition of a British first lady; wives of prime ministers have tended to be invisible. Cherie Blair, a lawyer like her husband only more distinguished, continued to work as a barrister, but also found herself cast as a scary cross between Hillary Clinton and Nancy Reagan, with her eager embrace of celebrity and all the freebies that come with it, her shady property deals, and her crystal-healing New Age guru Carol Caplin. There were Labor Party fundraising scandals and a slew of Cabinet ministers had messy extramarital affairs.
Still, all of it pales in the face of the Iraq invasion. Blair may have, like Bush, flat-out lied about the evidence for weapons of mass destruction, with his talk in Parliament of how Saddam Hussein could "deploy them in 45 minutes." Despite a government report that clears him of deliberately misleading the British public, polls show that most people think he did. "Blair was committed personally to the invasion of Iraq, no matter what George Bush did, " says Pienaar. "Like Thatcher, he is a conviction politician; he does what he sees as right."
Once Blair nailed his colors to Bush's mast, that was that: He will forever be seen as Bush's minion, the eloquent Briton who could make the Iraq adventure sound good and noble. Blair remained committed and loyal even though the Bush administration had no clue what to do postinvasion (apparently British officials tried to explain to the Americans that "shock and awe" did not constitute a plan) and even though the Green Zone rebuilding agencies were dominated by Halliburton subsidiaries. And what did Blair get from Bush in return? "Movement on global warming, " says Pienaar. "A little."
Now that Gordon Brown, an architect of Britain's purring economy, is prime minister, Britain's relationship with America will change.
In the Sun, Bush graciously allowed as how Brown isn't "the image of the dour Scotsman at all."
For his part, Brown told a meeting of the Labor Party last week that he'll move his government more to the left, concentrating on more redistribution of wealth.
Not a poodle, then.
As for Blair, he's flying off to Palestine as the new special envoy from the United Nations, the United States, Russia and the European Union, even though he's not exactly a favorite with Muslims.
In any case, the Atlantic Ocean has grown wider again.
Diane Roberts, a former Times editorial writer, teaches English and writing at Florida State University.