Britons will head to the polls next week to decide what their parliament will look like and who their prime minister will be. Everybody, myself included, expects PM Tony Blair's Labour Party to win a comfortable victory over the Conservative Party, who in many ways resembles the American Democratic Party, not in ideology but in direction. The Tories are in disarray and really have no agenda or big ideas they can give to the British public, and after watching Conservative Leader Michael Howard on C-SPAN this weekend their only real pitch to the public is an attempted indictment on Prime Minister Blair. Just as the Democrats tried to label the president a liar in our recent election, the Tories are lobbing the same charge at Blair right now. This charge, completely false by the way, is the sign of a desperate party who can't find another way to try and win an election.
Though I'd undoubtedly side with the Tories on domestic policy, I hope that Tony Blair continues on as British prime minister. The Bush-Blair partnership is approaching the same status as the Roosevelt-Churchill and Reagan-Thatcher alliances, and together the two have forged a new direction in the Middle East and the world. Both the president and Prime Minister Blair have risked political life and limb on Iraq, yet as the leader of a left-of-center nation, Blair's gamble was much greater. Opposition to the war within Great Britain was overwhelming and most of Blair's own party stood at odds with him. If it hadn't been for Iraq, this election probably wouldn't even be close.
Blair knew all of this going in, and yet he decided to join the U.S. anyway because he believed that what we were doing was right. His belief in the spread of freedom and his eloquence in expressing that belief(check here and here) is truly admirable, and a leader who risks everything to do what he believes is right is all to rare these days.
My hope is that when Britons head to the polls this week they won't leave Tony Blair's courage and leadership unrewarded.
UPDATE (5/5/05 4:59 P.M.): Tony Blair's Labour Party has won a third consecutive term as majority party in parliament. Blair is not out of the woods yet however, for their majority will be smaller and there is a chance that fractions within Labour that are disenchanted with the prime minister's stance on Iraq might try and replace him.
I think Blair went into this for 2 reasons:
ReplyDeleteHe trusted Bush to have a better post-war plan and he didn't expect a 2-year+ insurgency. He, like most of the U.S. media, fell for the swagger without questioning the methods.
A lot of us who don't trust Bush do trust Blair, and I'd like to see him re-elected. He is quite a bit more measured in his rhetoric than his buddy across the pond. In the run up to war, it was Blair who engaged people on their sensible intelligence, not their catastrophic fears.