Insiders at 10 Downing Street are said to vouch for this episode. As the American military machine groaned into action and the pounding of Baghdad commenced this spring, British Prime Minister Tony Blair reckoned it was time he composed a Churchillian address to his people to make his case for war and national unity. How should I begin, he asked his crack team of spin meisters. How about, my fellow Americans, supplied Alastair Campbell, then Blair’s director of communication. It was no doubt a dose of dark humour aimed at easing up pre-war nerves, but it was prescient in summing up Blair’s forseeable political future. This week, as US President George W. Bush transits through the porous palaces and barricaded streets of London, Blair must be retabulating the costs of honouring transatlantic bonds.Make no mistake. It’s Bush who’s stumbling through some rather somber royal protocol at Buckingham Palace. It’s Dubya who’s inspiring gaggles of reporters to some uncharacteristically witty prose about his visible confusion over when to clink glasses with her majesty and his sudden wink during a rendition of “God Save the Queen”. It’s his security that’s clearly on the line, with undercover journalists demonstrating how easy it is to slip in and out of his chambers. And it’s really his empire that’s being taunted when London’s mayor adds his voice to pesky agitationists chanting their unwelcome. But once Bush returns to Washington, footage of some regal moments in hand to add exotic lustre to his 2004 election bid, it will be Blair who will be constrained to give fresh justification for his American loyalties.The possible fallout of Bush’s trip across the pond could not be more starkly different for the two leaders. For Bush, it’s just an occasion to weather some stringent sarcasm from critics, which will in any case be balanced by growing legions of adherents to the neocon Americans-are-from-Mars-Europeans-from-Venus thesis. For Blair, it’s a moment that could give courage to more ideological fellow travellers in New Labour to break ranks and ask him to own moral responsibility for hasty action in West Asia. Really, it was so very avoidable. If only Blair’s “fellow Americans” has stayed at home.
