Hubristic, brave and right?

Blair says “bring it on”
With the Liberals finally pushing Iraq, hacks began to put the Prime Minister on the spot today over his part in the war. But as ever with Tony Blair, all a corner did was make him fight. When challenged by journalists over the nonsense of a watery ‘on the one hand . . . on the other’ legal opinion from the Attorney General, Mr Blair side-stepped the detail and instead brought the debate round to him, and to his war. In response to mewling demands for penance over Iraq, the Prime Minister declared, ‘I can’t say I’m sorry about it. I’m not sorry about it . . . the decision had to be made, and I took it’. We’ll overlook (as they do themselves) that the ‘decision’ was made collectively by the cabinet, in that they let him do it, and was then endorsed by the House of Commons, most emphatically including the vast majority of Tory MPs (then shadow chancellor Michael Howard to the fore). What we’ll agree to be amazed by is that this is all being written up as the Prime Minister wished: namely an appeal to concentrate on his “character”. While it might tempt some to think that Tony Blair was simply being sincerely pious, you do have to be a bit more cynical than that. For every piece of polling data we, and Old Queen Street, have says just one thing: Tony Blair’s still far more trusted, far more liked, and infinitely more respected than either of his two principal peers. Yet again, the Brer Rabbit of British politics has the opposition jumping into tar patches of his choosing.

Incidentally, when I dismissed the seriousness of Tory complaints over the vague mutterings of Lord Goldsmith (however did that man get to be one of the 500 quid an hour boys at the Bar?), I fear some too partisan Tories will hoot and shout a bit. That I’m being witlessly counter-intuitive in ignoring the repulsion ordinary people must feel about the Prime Minister’s behaviour over Iraq. Maybe so, but why, if this is so self-evident, are the Tory attacks on the Prime Minister not sticking? Very simple that, and the Goldsmith business is a hugely pertinent example. For what must this supposed fuss about the conceivable non-transmission of the Attorney General’s opinion as to whether the war was ‘legal’ or not amount to? It can only admit to one thing (as otherwise there is no story), that the Tories affect to believe the law officer told the cabinet that the war wasn’t. Yet what Tory believes the war was illegal? And if as indeed is the case, Tories either believe that the war was perfectly legal, or far more likely, don’t believe that British governments yet need the permission of lawyers before they go to war, with what sincerity can they attack the government on this front. As public reaction tends to show, none.

Maybe she’s backing UKIP?
If Gordon Brown being Nelson Mandela’s vicar-in-Britain yesterday wasn’t sickly enough (the Chancellor was pledging to end world suffering again, and even had that well known opponent of poverty, Bill Clinton, backing him up on trans-Atlantic video link), today Labour pushed the vomitous envelope just a tad too far. For it turns out that Mrs Thatcher would have been ‘appalled’ to stick her name to today’s Tory manifesto. Certainly Tory high command would have been appalled to have had it appended, and indeed boastfully stage-whisper about how completely they’ve kept Lady Thatcher out of their campaign. But that speaks more about their dedication to ignoring their party’s vote winning lessons from the 1980s than it does anything else. What this tells us is that, even from the mouth of a creature of Gordon Brown’s, it’s Thatcherite orthodoxy that has to have lip-service paid to it. There’s no great utility in complaining about how even less likely it is that Lady Thatcher would want to be associated with the 2005 Labour manifesto, but that even Brownites have to pretend they’re following in her footsteps, rather than the historic ones of their own creed, shows how much she really did change British politics. It also strongly suggests that Labour are presently rather less embarrassed about her legacy than Michael Howard’s official Conservative party is.

Market failure
And finally, another one bites the dust — in-house journal of right wing US pointy heads, The Public Interest, has gone the way of all flesh. To be more precise, if that flesh happens to be devoted to producing high brow conservative engagement with the world, this excellent magazine has eventually succumbed to what does for most such efforts: the withering demands of profit and loss. Still, forty years was a good run for such an enterprise, and few will doubt that The Public Interest was good work made dry, quarterly form. From a British perspective, one of the saddest aspects is that, with this, the closure of Irving Kristol's last organ of ideas, the final thread of continuity to our own Encounter disappears. Without wanting to sound too sententious, it's at times like this that the lonely mission of the Social Affairs Unit becomes all the more apparent. America's big enough to weather such losses, you do have to wonder about us.

For the duration of the campaign, the Social Affairs Unit will be publishing regular commentaries on the progress of the UK election. These commentaries represent the views of the anonymous commentator, not those of the Social Affairs Unit, its Trustees, Advisors or Director.