Why Blair is standing by Bush now

29 July 2006

Whether Tony Blair decides to step down at the next party conference, or hang in there until 2007, doesn’t much matter when it comes to appraising the much-mocked Blair–Bush relationship.

The healthy state of the Blair–Bush relationship is reflected in more than crisis management. The Bush team worried about the problems a British foreign minister faced when he depended for office on an electorate with a heavy Muslim component — something Secretary of State Rice noticed on her visit to Jack Straw’s constituency. Straw is now custodian at the House of Commons. Blair pleaded with Bush for help in taming the anti-Americans, and privately asked, ‘Please have him send me Condi Rice.’ Powell was too busy defending his home turf from a Rumsfeld invasion to spend much time abroad, and the neoconservative hard men who passed through London, strewing interviews and speeches in their path, did more harm than good. Bush eventually obliged, and Condi Rice proceeded to make Blair’s life easier at home and in Europe without giving an inch on the substance of American policy. Neither man acted solely to satisfy his partner, but each gave at least some weight to the needs of the other when retooling his foreign-policy apparatus.

Of course, a sort of special relationship prevailed when Bill Clinton sat in the Oval Office. But it was of a different sort, more talking shop, except when Blair finally prevailed on the reluctant president to move against genocide in the Balkans. Blair enjoyed and still enjoys his talk-fests with Bill Clinton, and says he regards the former president as the most effective political operator he has ever seen. And Cherie Booth finds Hillary Rodham a more congenial dinner partner than she does Laura Bush — two Left-leaning lawyers naturally have more in common than one such professional and a librarian whose happiest hours are spent teaching children to want to learn to read, and supporting her husband.

But talk is talk, and action is action. ‘George is quick to get to the heart of a problem, make up his mind about what to do, and then do it,’ is how Blair summarises their frequent video conferences. For Bush’s part, he regards the Prime Minister as a stand-up guy whom he would want at his back in a bar-room brawl. Texas talk, and not to be taken literally, since it has been a long while since the President could be found in a bar-room, or a brawl therein.