Bush's
Zombie Shuffles Off Stage
By Tariq Ali
10 May, 2007
Counterpunch
Tony
Blair's success was limited to winning three general elections in a
row. A second-rate actor, he turned out to be a crafty
and avaricious politician, but without much substance; bereft of ideas
he eagerly grasped and tried to improve upon the legacy of Margaret
Thatcher. But though in many ways Blair's programme has been a euphemistic,
if bloodier, version of Thatcher's, the style of their departures is
very different. Thatcher's overthrow by her fellow-Conservatives was
a matter of high drama: an announcement outside the Louvre's glass pyramid
during the Paris Congress brokering the end of the Cold War; tears;
a crowded House of Commons. Blair makes his unwilling exit against a
backdrop of car-bombs and mass carnage in Iraq, with hundreds of thousands
left dead or maimed from his policies, and London a prime target for
terrorist attack. Thatcher's supporters described themselves afterwards
as horror-struck by what they had done. Even Blair's greatest sycophants
in the British media: Martin Kettle and Michael White (The Guardian),
Andrew Rawnsley (Observer), Philip Stephens (FT) confess to a sense
of relief as he finally quits.
A true creature of the Washington Consensus, Blair
was always loyal to the various occupants of the White House. In Europe,
he preferred Aznar to Zapatero, Merckel to Schroeder, was seriously
impressed by to Berlusconi and, most recently, made no secret of his
desire that Sarkozy was his candidate in France. He understood that
privatisation/deregulation at home were part of the same mechanism as
the wars abroad. If this judgement seems unduly harsh let me quote Sir
Rodric Braithwaite, a former senior adviser to Blair, writing in the
Financial Times on 2, August, 2006:
"A spectre is stalking
British television, a frayed and waxy zombie straight from Madame Tussaud's.
This one, unusually, seems to live and breathe. Perhaps it comes from
the Central Intelligence Agency's box of technical tricks, programmed
to spout the language of the White House in an artificial English accent...
Mr Blair has done more
damage to British interests in the Middle East than Anthony Eden, who
led the UK to disaster in Suez 50 years ago. In the past 100 years--to
take the highlights--we have bombed and occupied Egypt and Iraq, put
down an Arab uprising in Palestine and overthrown governments in Iran,
Iraq and the Gulf. We can no longer do these things on our own, so we
do them with the Americans. Mr Blair's total identification with the
White House has destroyed his influence in Washington, Europe and the
Middle East itself: who bothers with the monkey if he can go straight
to the organ-grinder?..."
This, too, is mild compared to what is said about
Blair in the British Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence. Senior
diplomats have told me on more than one occasion that it would not upset
them too much if Blair were to be tried as a war criminal. More cultured
critics sometimes compare him to the Cavaliere Cipolia, the vile hypnotist
of fascist Italy, so brilliantly portrayed in Thomas Mann's 1929 novel
'Mario and the Magician'. Blair is certainly not Mussolini, but like
the Duce he enjoyed to simultaneously lead and humiliate his supporters.
What much of this reveals is anger and impotence.
There is no mechanism to get rid of a sitting Prime Minister unless
his or her party loses confidence. The Conservative leadership decided
that Thatcher simply had to go because of her negative attitude to Europe.
Labour tends to be more sentimental towards its leaders and in this
case they owed so much to Blair that nobody close to him wants to be
cast in the role of Brutus. In the end he decided to go himself. The
disaster in Iraq had made him a much hated politician and slowly support
began to ebb. One reason for the slowness was that the country is without
a serious opposition. In Parliament, the Conservatives simply followed
Blair. The Liberal-Democrats were ineffective. Blair had summed up Britain's
attitude to Europe at Nice in 2000:
"It is possible,
in our judgement, to fight Britain's corner, get the best out of Europe
for Britain and exercise real authority and influence in Europe. That
is as it should be. Britain is a world power."
This grotesque, self-serving fantasy that 'Britain
is a world power' is to justify that it will always be EU/UK. The real
union is with Washington. France and Germany are seen as rivals for
Washington's affections, not potential allies in an independent EU.
The French decision to re-integrate themselves into NATO and pose as
the most vigorous US ally was a serious structural shift which weakened
Europe. Britain responded by encouraging a fragmented political order
in Europe through expansion and insisted on a permanent US presence
on the continent.
Blair's half-anointed, half-hated successor, Gordon
Brown, is far more intelligent (he reads books) but politically no different.
There might be a change of tone, but little else. It is a grim prospect
with or without Blair and an alternative politics (anti-war, anti-Trident,
defence of public services) is confined to the nationalist parties in
Scotland and Wales. Its absence nationally fuels the anger felt by substantial
sections of the population, reflected in voting (or not) against those
in power.
Tariq Ali's
new book, Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope, is published by Verso.
He can be reached at: [email protected]
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