Britain needs a declaration of independence from America

[Doondoo]

Opponents of the war in Iraq get daily vindication that the invasion was a terrible mistake. Supporters of the removal of Saddam feel betrayed by the appalling mess the divided and incompetent Bush administration has made of the aftermath. Tony Blair is an increasingly lonely voice when he pleads that Britain and America must remain each other's indispensable allies. 'We shouldn't give that up in any set of circumstances,' the Prime Minister declared when he appeared before senior MPs last week. 'The relationship with America is what opens lots of doors everywhere.' He did not make his case more persuasive when he selected climate change as an example of what he had got out of his closeness to George W Bush. When he leaves Number 10, his successors will have to fashion a new foreign policy for Britain which recasts its relationship with America and reorients its approach to the rest of the world.

The United Kingdom and the United States will remain firm friends. Their histories, economies and cultures are too entwined for it to be otherwise. They will continue to co-operate in the struggle against Islamist terrorism. Often, they will have mutual interests which will put them on the same side in global arguments.

That said, the relationship will never be the same again. And Tony Blair is one of the reasons why it will change. He has not been the Prime Minister he expected to be. He entered Downing Street as an instinctively pro-European leader who thought it was his destiny to settle Britain's relationship with Europe. He ends his premiership with it most defined by his relationship with the United States. The guiding principle of Mr Blair's foreign policy has been to get as close as he could to the American President, whoever he was. He was Bill Clinton's closest chum, then George W Bush's best buddy. As Mr Blair acknowledges, he has paid a high 'political penalty' for that. What he or Britain got in return is not clear, even to some of his closest colleagues. 'Iraq has been a total disaster,' says one minister who can be normally counted as a great Blair loyalist.

One of the unintended consequences of his adherence to America is to make it more likely that his successors will put some distance between themselves and Washington. Gordon Brown talks coolly, if imprecisely, about adopting a stance which puts 'Britain's interests first'. David Cameron has described himself as 'a liberal conservative rather than a neoconservative' who would be 'solid but not slavish in our friendship with America'. A Conservative government would not join those who believe in 'recklessly poking the United States in the eye', but nor would it be 'America's unconditional associate in every endeavour'. Mr Cameron is not anti-American. Neither is Gordon Brown. But they do sense the demand in Britain for our own declaration of independence from America.



http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,2010502,00.html

[Prophet 451]

1. It's all about Blair

If he hadn't insisted on following Chimpy into the mess in Iraq, we wouldn't be seeing any of this but since he did, a lot of people are asking themselves why we persist in following the States. There's a saying here that the Yanks saved us in WWII and we've spent sixty years repaying them. Whoever the next PM is, they're going to be forced to put some more distance between themselves and Bush or risk being tainted with the public revulsion to Blair.