Australia is probably Britain's biggest ally after the United States, and America's biggest ally after Britain. Its right-wing Prime Minister, John Howard, was a steadfast supporter of the Iraq War and sent troops to Iraq alongside America, Britain (only those two fellow Anglo-Saxon countries contributed more troops to the war than Australia), at least 17 of the current 27 EU members and several other countries.
Now an Australian newspaper honours Blair as he prepares to step down on 27th June.....
The world was lucky to have Tony Blair
We will miss the British PM when he exits the global stage, writes foreign editor Greg Sheridan
May 10, 2007
The Australian
TONY Blair was the greatest statesman in Western civilisation in the past 10 years and the world will sorely miss his leadership. He will soon retire from the prime ministership, after three smashing election wins, as the most electorally successful leader in the history of British Labour.
He is despised and reviled without reservation of any kind by the bien pensants across the world, but most especially in Britain. This alone indicates his essential goodness. He is equally despised by al-Qa'ida and Islamist fascists across the world. As they say, you are known more by your enemies than your friends. Blair certainly has the right enemies.
The British people, though, never gave up on Blair. His election win in 2005 was his third; he is the only Labour leader to achieve this. His parliamentary majority in his third victory was the biggest for any Labour leader since Harold Wilson in 1966 (except for Blair's two previous majorities). Last week a poll in The Independent showed 61 per cent of the British public thought he had been a good PM.
Almost all the hostility to Blair comes from Iraq, yet at the last election 70 per cent of the British electorate voted for parties that strongly backed the Iraq invasion. If Iraq had been the frightful, wrenching, credibility-destroying obsession the commentators claimed, the anti-war Liberal Democrats would have scored a breakthrough. They didn't.
It is on Iraq, and the war on terror, that Blair was a great leader. I find I hold a view almost directly the opposite of the conventional wisdom on Blair. As a domestic leader I think he was a bit of a dud, B minus at best, and on foreign policy other than Iraq and terror, perhaps a C plus.
On domestic policy Blair made one giant contribution that earns him his just-better-than-pass grade. He understood that he should not try to undo any part of the Thatcher revolution. He did not re-nationalise any industries; he broke decisively with trade unions and did not try to make them central once more to British economic life; he did not substantially lift personal tax rates; he remained business friendly.
All the nonsensical palaver about the third way, which was big in his early years, was just smoke and mirrors. It had one serious political purpose: to bamboozle the Left. Successful Labour leaders, in Britain and Australia, get their left-wing parties to do right-wing things for ostensibly left-wing reasons. Blair was initially brilliant at that. But much of the renewal he promised domestically never arrived. I spent a few weeks in Britain a couple of years ago and travelled everywhere by train. Every train I took was late and shambolic. This is true generally of British services now.
The place was also surly and unpleasant. The public culture has declined into drunkenness and ubiquitous loutishness. The British, once renowned for their politeness and gentility, are now oafish and celebrate a Thames estuary twang slang of hermaphroditic ugliness. Australian cities such as Melbourne and Adelaide are cultured, courteous and civilised by comparison.
Blair failed, too, in administering British multiculturalism (which is vastly different from Australian multiculturalism). The first thing an official Brit says to you these days is Britain is no longer a class-based society. While this is plainly untrue (social mobility has declined in Britain), it is also somehow flesh-creeping. The British have accepted a version of multiculturalism in which their whole history is something to be ashamed of. As an Irish Australian I am in weaker moments tempted to feel some schadenfreude at this. But once I got past the childhood stage of hating the Brits as the enemies of Irish freedom, I came to see from history that the British story is infinitely more positive than negative, that we live in a world made in English, if not in England, and that British institutions and cultural norms have been a blessing to the world. Yet the British these days seem to suffer from a cultural cringe, which we Australians in recent decades have shaken off.
The official Brit reflects this elite self-loathing by beginning any discussion that deals with anything traditionally British with some sort of explicit or implied apology. This self-loathing is one of the reasons Britain is struggling so much to confront the terror cells on its soil.
On non-terror foreign policy issues, Blair's instincts were often poor, but he was a good enough politician to work his way past his instincts. He began his term in office as a passionate European but came to see the EU as nothing but danger for him and his Government and his nation. He stayed a million miles away from the European currency - the euro - and always chose the US over Europe.
But it is for his leadership on Iraq and the war on terror that Blair deserves praise and gratitude. Since the 9/11 terror attacks Blair has been the most articulate defender of Western civilisation. He has expressed more clearly than anyone the nature of the conflict with Islamist terror. He understood that the people responsible for terrorism are the terrorists. He understood the absolutely central role of the terrorist ideology in recruiting, training and motivating terrorists.
The Iraq intervention, as this column has often argued, was right in principle, though the subsequent occupation has been monstrously implemented. The release of the self-serving memoir by former CIA boss George Tenet actually strengthens the case in two ways. It shows (as other books have, though you never read it in the press) that in fact there were substantial linkages between al-Qa'ida and Saddam Hussein. And it shows that Saddam wanted nuclear weapons and the CIA thought he would get them within a few years.
Blair understood the overwhelming strategic and moral urgency of dealing with the cruellest dictator in the latter part of the 20th century.
For a politician who had assiduously courted popularity, and the good opinion of the Left-Wing BBC-Guardian-Independent axis, all his political life, there must have been an exquisite agony in turning them into his bitterest opponents.
But Blair knew what was right, stuck to his guns and argued his case passionately, tirelessly and courteously. Incidentally, he loved Australia. The world was lucky to have him.
thesutralian.news.com
Now an Australian newspaper honours Blair as he prepares to step down on 27th June.....
The world was lucky to have Tony Blair
We will miss the British PM when he exits the global stage, writes foreign editor Greg Sheridan
May 10, 2007
The Australian
TONY Blair was the greatest statesman in Western civilisation in the past 10 years and the world will sorely miss his leadership. He will soon retire from the prime ministership, after three smashing election wins, as the most electorally successful leader in the history of British Labour.
He is despised and reviled without reservation of any kind by the bien pensants across the world, but most especially in Britain. This alone indicates his essential goodness. He is equally despised by al-Qa'ida and Islamist fascists across the world. As they say, you are known more by your enemies than your friends. Blair certainly has the right enemies.
The British people, though, never gave up on Blair. His election win in 2005 was his third; he is the only Labour leader to achieve this. His parliamentary majority in his third victory was the biggest for any Labour leader since Harold Wilson in 1966 (except for Blair's two previous majorities). Last week a poll in The Independent showed 61 per cent of the British public thought he had been a good PM.
Almost all the hostility to Blair comes from Iraq, yet at the last election 70 per cent of the British electorate voted for parties that strongly backed the Iraq invasion. If Iraq had been the frightful, wrenching, credibility-destroying obsession the commentators claimed, the anti-war Liberal Democrats would have scored a breakthrough. They didn't.
It is on Iraq, and the war on terror, that Blair was a great leader. I find I hold a view almost directly the opposite of the conventional wisdom on Blair. As a domestic leader I think he was a bit of a dud, B minus at best, and on foreign policy other than Iraq and terror, perhaps a C plus.
On domestic policy Blair made one giant contribution that earns him his just-better-than-pass grade. He understood that he should not try to undo any part of the Thatcher revolution. He did not re-nationalise any industries; he broke decisively with trade unions and did not try to make them central once more to British economic life; he did not substantially lift personal tax rates; he remained business friendly.
All the nonsensical palaver about the third way, which was big in his early years, was just smoke and mirrors. It had one serious political purpose: to bamboozle the Left. Successful Labour leaders, in Britain and Australia, get their left-wing parties to do right-wing things for ostensibly left-wing reasons. Blair was initially brilliant at that. But much of the renewal he promised domestically never arrived. I spent a few weeks in Britain a couple of years ago and travelled everywhere by train. Every train I took was late and shambolic. This is true generally of British services now.
The place was also surly and unpleasant. The public culture has declined into drunkenness and ubiquitous loutishness. The British, once renowned for their politeness and gentility, are now oafish and celebrate a Thames estuary twang slang of hermaphroditic ugliness. Australian cities such as Melbourne and Adelaide are cultured, courteous and civilised by comparison.
Blair failed, too, in administering British multiculturalism (which is vastly different from Australian multiculturalism). The first thing an official Brit says to you these days is Britain is no longer a class-based society. While this is plainly untrue (social mobility has declined in Britain), it is also somehow flesh-creeping. The British have accepted a version of multiculturalism in which their whole history is something to be ashamed of. As an Irish Australian I am in weaker moments tempted to feel some schadenfreude at this. But once I got past the childhood stage of hating the Brits as the enemies of Irish freedom, I came to see from history that the British story is infinitely more positive than negative, that we live in a world made in English, if not in England, and that British institutions and cultural norms have been a blessing to the world. Yet the British these days seem to suffer from a cultural cringe, which we Australians in recent decades have shaken off.
The official Brit reflects this elite self-loathing by beginning any discussion that deals with anything traditionally British with some sort of explicit or implied apology. This self-loathing is one of the reasons Britain is struggling so much to confront the terror cells on its soil.
On non-terror foreign policy issues, Blair's instincts were often poor, but he was a good enough politician to work his way past his instincts. He began his term in office as a passionate European but came to see the EU as nothing but danger for him and his Government and his nation. He stayed a million miles away from the European currency - the euro - and always chose the US over Europe.
But it is for his leadership on Iraq and the war on terror that Blair deserves praise and gratitude. Since the 9/11 terror attacks Blair has been the most articulate defender of Western civilisation. He has expressed more clearly than anyone the nature of the conflict with Islamist terror. He understood that the people responsible for terrorism are the terrorists. He understood the absolutely central role of the terrorist ideology in recruiting, training and motivating terrorists.
The Iraq intervention, as this column has often argued, was right in principle, though the subsequent occupation has been monstrously implemented. The release of the self-serving memoir by former CIA boss George Tenet actually strengthens the case in two ways. It shows (as other books have, though you never read it in the press) that in fact there were substantial linkages between al-Qa'ida and Saddam Hussein. And it shows that Saddam wanted nuclear weapons and the CIA thought he would get them within a few years.
Blair understood the overwhelming strategic and moral urgency of dealing with the cruellest dictator in the latter part of the 20th century.
For a politician who had assiduously courted popularity, and the good opinion of the Left-Wing BBC-Guardian-Independent axis, all his political life, there must have been an exquisite agony in turning them into his bitterest opponents.
But Blair knew what was right, stuck to his guns and argued his case passionately, tirelessly and courteously. Incidentally, he loved Australia. The world was lucky to have him.
thesutralian.news.com
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