Labour's love lost
Or How Britons came to hate Tony Blair and America, and why the next prime minister will pay the price. Fascinating article by the British journalist Andrew Brown in Salon about the prospects of a post-Blair Britain. (I've linked to the print-friendly version in the hopes that you'll escape the need to watch an ad that way.) Here's the final paragraph:
The Conservatives were rendered unelectable for a full decade by their seething, rancorous hatred of Europe, which was Thatcher's legacy and which drove the party into a civil war. Labor may choose to destroy itself over the question of anti-Americanism. The joke is that in both cases, all that is at stake are gestures. What else can we do with our economy but trade with Europe? What else can we do with our army but fight as American mercenaries? Perhaps Blair's real failure was not that he offered his services to the White House, but that he never charged enough.
The Conservatives were rendered unelectable for a full decade by their seething, rancorous hatred of Europe, which was Thatcher's legacy and which drove the party into a civil war. Labor may choose to destroy itself over the question of anti-Americanism. The joke is that in both cases, all that is at stake are gestures. What else can we do with our economy but trade with Europe? What else can we do with our army but fight as American mercenaries? Perhaps Blair's real failure was not that he offered his services to the White House, but that he never charged enough.