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After reading my colleague Roger Ebert's review of
''The Queen'' (and it is wonderful that he's writing reviews again!), I
decided that I must see the film at once. I was not much interested in the
royals, empty and useless folk -- though the Brits are welcome to them as a
symbol if they want. But I was very interested in Tony Blair. Blair is the most fascinating British prime minister since Winston Churchill and he does not consume a tumbler of bourbon for breakfast every morning, as Churchill did. Blair brought Labor into the mainstream of English politics, won three overwhelming victories and reshaped much of English political life. |
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The House of Lords has been shorn
of its last vestiges of political power. He devolved home rule, of a sort,
to Scotland and Wales. His intense efforts have ended the violence in
Northern Ireland, and just this week seemed to have persuaded the Rev. Ian
Paisley to enter a political alliance with the Catholic Sinn Fein (keep your
fingers crossed!). The previous week Paisley actually visited Sean Brady,
the Catholic Primate of All Ireland -- an unthinkable event until very
recently. (Paisley once shouted "heretic" at the pope!) The film is the story of how Blair prevented the monarchy from self-destructing by its silent response to the death of Princess Diana. The drama comes from the personal ambivalence he felt about the queen's stubbornness. He was not a fan of the royal family, either as persons or as an institution. Yet he believed, rightly or wrongly, that the royals were still a critical element of English life. So at the beginning of his term of office, he saved the royalty against their wills and against some of his own instincts -- though also with considerable respect for the queen's half-century commitment to her duty as she saw it. |
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Similarly, at the end of his years as prime minister, Blair remained
loyal to the Anglo-American alliance, one suspects with considerable doubt
about the American leader with whom he was yoked. He had been able to
moderate and restrain the queen; President Bush was another matter
altogether. He knew that Bush was already unpopular in England and that a
war in Iraq would be equally unpopular. Yet the alliance, he felt, was
essential to both countries. He gambled and, sadly, he lost the gamble. Animosity toward Blair increased during this decade in office. The English chattering class (professors and journalists) never much liked him. He was too smooth, too articulate, too adroit, too charming. The rest of the country became rather bored with his wit and his smile. Many people were looking for an excuse to take him down -- nothing fails like success. Blair was tagged with the label "Bush's puppy." He had gambled and lost. Whether Labor can win an election without him is problematic. There is no one else in any party on the English political stage who can compare with him in talent, energy and ideas. As we say across the Irish Sea: We'll not see his like again. Was the alliance worth saving? Surely it was. However, it will be a long time before a prime minister risks his career by allying himself to an American president. Blair not only lost, he lost big. He watched the institution he believed in so completely disintegrate. He did not realize, I suspect, just how incompetent were the neocons and the evangelicals in the Bush administration and how clueless, if well-meaning, Bush was. Most Americans have begun to realize what a tragic mistake the Iraq war was and how many men and women -- Iraqis and Americans -- have died needlessly. Against such a background, the destruction of an agile and able foreign ally may not seem to matter much. Yet, if you do in your closest friends, pretty soon you will not have any friends left, only enemies. In years to come, this country will come to regret what Bush did to Blair. (Ireland, by the way, is such a large country that it needs four primates: two Primates of Ireland (in Dublin) and two Primates of All Ireland (in Armagh Northern Ireland. The luck of the Irish!) . |
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