Who can we count on to stand by us: Europe or America?
By Simon Heffer
20/12/2006
The Telegraph
Britain and the United States should always remain good friends. Britain should never rely on - and trust - the Continental Europeans.
Why, I wonder, does Tony Blair go on? I have always believed, more than many of his critics do, that he has an ethic of public service, but even that must be stretched by what is happening to him now. The print of the policemen's size 11s has barely faded from the Downing Street carpet. If press speculation is to be believed, some of the Prime Minister's best friends could be behind bars by next Christmas. He knows Gordon Brown will, barring some quite remarkable sequence of events, succeed him in office.
The game is up. There is no more he can usefully do. It is, surely, time to call it a day.
These arguments are all, I know, based on the personal strains, disappointments and humiliations that Mr Blair must be feeling in an unpleasant twilight to a career he hoped would be built on moral uplift. But there are, of course, wider reasons. His continuation in office does the country no good. There is paralysis in Whitehall.
Ministers look over their shoulders, wondering — or, in many cases, fearing — what life under the nouveau regime will mean for them. The rhetoric that spews out of the Labour press machine is (like the Chancellor's recent Pre-Budget Report) all old announcements and old initiatives, served up yet again. This is bad enough on the domestic front: internationally, it is a disaster.
Take, for example, the report published yesterday by the foreign affairs think-tank Chatham House. It suggested that the Prime Minister had no influence over George W. Bush, that our country's global influence had faltered as a result and that we had better build stronger ties with Europe. As part of this last suggestion, the Government is being urged to "re-think" our position on the euro and on the Schengen agreement, which allows passport-free travel over certain European borders. In a sinister phrase, the report says that a "rebalancing" of our foreign policy between Europe and America is necessary: hello Europe, bye-bye what remains of the special relationship.
So much of this short report is claptrap, and so inimical to the country's economic and security interests, that one might have thought at first sight it would give the Prime Minister cause to feel relieved. That, though, will have been before he heard Margaret Beckett, our Foreign Secretary, trying to rubbish it on the Today programme yesterday morning. This is the season of goodwill, and this column has been graphically rude about Mrs Beckett before, so I shall spare you much of the detail. Suffice it to say that by the end of her interview, Mrs Beckett had (by a toxic combination of bluster, inaccuracy, incompetence, petulance and quite possibly downright dishonesty) created the impression that the Chatham House report was a work of genius, its conclusions so self-evidently wise, that only a blithering idiot would attempt to dispute it, or them.
I occasionally, in those quiet after-dinner moments, ruminate on whether Mrs Beckett is the worst foreign secretary in modern British history. John Major might have run her close, but he only lasted in the job for three months. George Brown was at least intentionally amusing (as well as, a lot of the time, unintentionally so). At least Selwyn Lloyd tried. No: Mrs Beckett is in a class of her own. She combines a complete failure to grasp her brief — and, it seems, a profound lack of interest in it — with a humourless truculence that is at the same time pointless and embarrassing. She thinks she knows all the tricks of the game when it comes to avoiding giving any sort of answer to a serious and important question. However, they are tricks of obfuscation that worked when she was in the third division, but which simply confirm she is way out of her depth in the first.
Mr Blair's departure from Downing Street will at least — unless Mr Brown is certifiable — mean we get a new foreign secretary. But will it — should it — mean, as Chatham House hopes, that we get a new foreign policy? Undeniably, some of the points made in the report are true. Mr Blair has been taken for a ride by President Bush, but that is not the same as saying that it was wrong for us to participate with America in the Iraq war. Our participation should have been contingent on a strong input from our Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, and it should have been up for review at all times. We could have demanded these conditions from the Americans. The political importance to them of our participation in Iraq meant our conditions would have had to be respected. But Mr Blair — whether because he was starstruck, careless, complacent or just too busy — chose not to.
Moreover, saying America has taken us for a ride is not the same as saying we must chuck in our lot with the Europeans and, as the strong pro-euro tone of the Chatham House report would suggest, accept our inevitable role as a subject region of a federated superstate. It is the pro-euro line, at a time when even the French prime minister is saying he wishes he could have the franc back, that most marks out the unreality of this report. But then, in this climate of casual anti-Americanism — as unpleasant in its way as the casual anti-semitism so popular in this country until the newsreel cameras went into Auschwitz — any absurd alternative to our established strategic plan must seem attractive.
Only the truly obtuse could ever imagine that the European Union could act as a reliable defensive coalition against any of this country's, or the West's, likely enemies.
That is why we were in such a difficult position in the spring of 2003. Having relied on America for decades, until the end of the Soviet Union, to help protect us against the possibility of nuclear annihilation, were we then supposed to turn round and tell America to go it alone? And do we really think it would benefit the long-term interests of this country for us to turn round and make a similar suggestion to our most reliable ally now?
Mr Bush certainly is not the brightest light on the Christmas tree, and in an ideal world we would not be dealing with him. But we are in the world we are in, and he is the (twice) democratically elected leader of our most important friend on earth: a friend that, for the moment, is the world's only superpower.
In exactly two years and one month, he will leave office. Washington has learnt more from the debacles of the past four years than it finds it politically feasible to admit, but we can be sure that, whether a Republican or a Democrat succeeds Mr Bush, he will not pursue international relations in anything like the same tone as this Administration has, or be happy with a servile approach from us to the Anglo-American relationship — which remains, as Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, pointed out this week, the most important we have.
Foreign policy is the most significant challenge that will face the next prime minister.
He needs a new, serious, highly intelligent foreign secretary. He needs to put our relationship with America urgently on a new footing — but one that will reinforce the alliance between us and not undermine it. Above all, he needs to recognise the true long-term strategic threats to our country — most immediately from Islamic terrorism, but in the longer term from an increasingly rogue state in Russia, with its energy supplies and nuclear warheads — and ask what possible use Europe is likely to be in defeating either.
Uncle Sam may have shown he can be a bit of a stupid bastard but, in the end, he's still OUR bastard.
telegraph.o.uk
By Simon Heffer
20/12/2006
The Telegraph
Britain and the United States should always remain good friends. Britain should never rely on - and trust - the Continental Europeans.
Why, I wonder, does Tony Blair go on? I have always believed, more than many of his critics do, that he has an ethic of public service, but even that must be stretched by what is happening to him now. The print of the policemen's size 11s has barely faded from the Downing Street carpet. If press speculation is to be believed, some of the Prime Minister's best friends could be behind bars by next Christmas. He knows Gordon Brown will, barring some quite remarkable sequence of events, succeed him in office.
The game is up. There is no more he can usefully do. It is, surely, time to call it a day.
These arguments are all, I know, based on the personal strains, disappointments and humiliations that Mr Blair must be feeling in an unpleasant twilight to a career he hoped would be built on moral uplift. But there are, of course, wider reasons. His continuation in office does the country no good. There is paralysis in Whitehall.
Ministers look over their shoulders, wondering — or, in many cases, fearing — what life under the nouveau regime will mean for them. The rhetoric that spews out of the Labour press machine is (like the Chancellor's recent Pre-Budget Report) all old announcements and old initiatives, served up yet again. This is bad enough on the domestic front: internationally, it is a disaster.
Take, for example, the report published yesterday by the foreign affairs think-tank Chatham House. It suggested that the Prime Minister had no influence over George W. Bush, that our country's global influence had faltered as a result and that we had better build stronger ties with Europe. As part of this last suggestion, the Government is being urged to "re-think" our position on the euro and on the Schengen agreement, which allows passport-free travel over certain European borders. In a sinister phrase, the report says that a "rebalancing" of our foreign policy between Europe and America is necessary: hello Europe, bye-bye what remains of the special relationship.
So much of this short report is claptrap, and so inimical to the country's economic and security interests, that one might have thought at first sight it would give the Prime Minister cause to feel relieved. That, though, will have been before he heard Margaret Beckett, our Foreign Secretary, trying to rubbish it on the Today programme yesterday morning. This is the season of goodwill, and this column has been graphically rude about Mrs Beckett before, so I shall spare you much of the detail. Suffice it to say that by the end of her interview, Mrs Beckett had (by a toxic combination of bluster, inaccuracy, incompetence, petulance and quite possibly downright dishonesty) created the impression that the Chatham House report was a work of genius, its conclusions so self-evidently wise, that only a blithering idiot would attempt to dispute it, or them.
I occasionally, in those quiet after-dinner moments, ruminate on whether Mrs Beckett is the worst foreign secretary in modern British history. John Major might have run her close, but he only lasted in the job for three months. George Brown was at least intentionally amusing (as well as, a lot of the time, unintentionally so). At least Selwyn Lloyd tried. No: Mrs Beckett is in a class of her own. She combines a complete failure to grasp her brief — and, it seems, a profound lack of interest in it — with a humourless truculence that is at the same time pointless and embarrassing. She thinks she knows all the tricks of the game when it comes to avoiding giving any sort of answer to a serious and important question. However, they are tricks of obfuscation that worked when she was in the third division, but which simply confirm she is way out of her depth in the first.
Mr Blair's departure from Downing Street will at least — unless Mr Brown is certifiable — mean we get a new foreign secretary. But will it — should it — mean, as Chatham House hopes, that we get a new foreign policy? Undeniably, some of the points made in the report are true. Mr Blair has been taken for a ride by President Bush, but that is not the same as saying that it was wrong for us to participate with America in the Iraq war. Our participation should have been contingent on a strong input from our Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, and it should have been up for review at all times. We could have demanded these conditions from the Americans. The political importance to them of our participation in Iraq meant our conditions would have had to be respected. But Mr Blair — whether because he was starstruck, careless, complacent or just too busy — chose not to.
Moreover, saying America has taken us for a ride is not the same as saying we must chuck in our lot with the Europeans and, as the strong pro-euro tone of the Chatham House report would suggest, accept our inevitable role as a subject region of a federated superstate. It is the pro-euro line, at a time when even the French prime minister is saying he wishes he could have the franc back, that most marks out the unreality of this report. But then, in this climate of casual anti-Americanism — as unpleasant in its way as the casual anti-semitism so popular in this country until the newsreel cameras went into Auschwitz — any absurd alternative to our established strategic plan must seem attractive.
Only the truly obtuse could ever imagine that the European Union could act as a reliable defensive coalition against any of this country's, or the West's, likely enemies.
That is why we were in such a difficult position in the spring of 2003. Having relied on America for decades, until the end of the Soviet Union, to help protect us against the possibility of nuclear annihilation, were we then supposed to turn round and tell America to go it alone? And do we really think it would benefit the long-term interests of this country for us to turn round and make a similar suggestion to our most reliable ally now?
Mr Bush certainly is not the brightest light on the Christmas tree, and in an ideal world we would not be dealing with him. But we are in the world we are in, and he is the (twice) democratically elected leader of our most important friend on earth: a friend that, for the moment, is the world's only superpower.
In exactly two years and one month, he will leave office. Washington has learnt more from the debacles of the past four years than it finds it politically feasible to admit, but we can be sure that, whether a Republican or a Democrat succeeds Mr Bush, he will not pursue international relations in anything like the same tone as this Administration has, or be happy with a servile approach from us to the Anglo-American relationship — which remains, as Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, pointed out this week, the most important we have.
Foreign policy is the most significant challenge that will face the next prime minister.
He needs a new, serious, highly intelligent foreign secretary. He needs to put our relationship with America urgently on a new footing — but one that will reinforce the alliance between us and not undermine it. Above all, he needs to recognise the true long-term strategic threats to our country — most immediately from Islamic terrorism, but in the longer term from an increasingly rogue state in Russia, with its energy supplies and nuclear warheads — and ask what possible use Europe is likely to be in defeating either.
Uncle Sam may have shown he can be a bit of a stupid bastard but, in the end, he's still OUR bastard.
telegraph.o.uk
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she is likely young but hell she's one here being interested in political affairs. Yep it sounded very narrow in scope ..very black and white, but so many young people have no opinion at all..don't even know the makeup of the system or even know about funding the monarcy...
