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.
Washington
Whether Tony Blair decides to oblige the braying Brownites and step down at the next party conference, or hang in there until the 2007 Labour party gathering, doesn’t much matter when it comes to appraising the much-mocked Blair–Bush relationship. In relatively short order, both men will have reached the end of their careers in electoral politics, bringing to a close an amazing relationship between your Prime Minister and my President. And one that is badly misunderstood.
Not by chance. Pundits and pols on your side of the ocean have a stake in proving that Tony Blair is George Bush’s poodle, and their counterparts on my side find it useful to depict Bush as so inarticulate and, er, dumb, that he needs Blair to flit over to America to explain US foreign policy. So it’s not-very-bright Bush and not-very-powerful Blair locked in an embrace of necessity.
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