Why Tony Blair fears the coming of President Kerry

[T_i_B]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1149631,00.html

Though eight and a half months of unprecedentedly negative campaigning and a host of unforeseeable events still separate us from election day, Kerry's emergence has already turned the contest on its head. Last week's Washington Post national poll had Kerry leading Bush by 52-43 points. The assumption that Bush is bound to win no longer applies.

To most Labour supporters - indeed it would not be an exaggeration to say to most people in Europe - the prospect of President Kerry is almost too good to be true. The ameliorative possibilities for international affairs from a Kerry victory are immense. If ever there was a US presidential election that exposes the lazy lie that it does not matter which man wins, it is this one.

You might think, therefore, that behind the doors of Downing Street there is also a new optimism about the possibilities opened up by the turn of events in America. Given the axiomatic importance Blair attaches to US presidential politics, you might assume the prime minister's mood has lightened, as he contemplates the possibility of a 2005 general election conducted in the light, not of a triumphalist Bush re-election but of Bush's deposition by his more internationalist Democratic challenger.

But I fear that you might be wrong. If Bush is defeated in November, does that actually make Blair stronger or weaker? Would a Kerry victory give fresh credibility to Blair the Labour prime minister or toll the knell for Blair the Bush ally? Inside Downing Street there is much disagreement about all this. It is a mark of the political cancer caused by the Iraq war that it cannot be assumed that Blair wants Kerry to win. It is the ultimate pessimism that Blair may even prefer to see Bush re-elected.

[DeepModem Mom]

1. My hope is to see PM Gordon Brown meeting with...

President Kerry.

[ludwigb]

8. Is he a Labourr Challenger?

My own fantasy is that Labour will wake up one day and depose Blair in favor of Robin Cook.

Otherwise I think they'll lose a lot of seats in 2005 to both the Conservatives and the Liberals.

[DeepModem Mom]

9. Brown is the assumed alternatiave to Blair....

He is his Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer. There are rumors that he is already in contact with John Kerry.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

11. Brown's better, but the sad fact is, Charlie Kennedy is to the left

of the Labour Party. When the Liberal Democrats are to the left of the Labour party, there is something very wrong with your nation's politics. That said, I think Kennedy would make a great PM.

[AP]

19. Brown's actually worse if you care about corporatocracy.

But he's better than any Tory, and he's loyal to Blair, which makes him a decent guy.

He has a brother in Boston where he spends a lot of time, by the way.

[Josh]

14. Brown is an opportunistic hack. England is presently devoid of

real leadership.

[T_i_B]

28. That's true

Brown is the assumed alternative to Blair and still the most likely man to replace Blar as PM by some distance. Cook has his good points, and were I a Labour member voting in a hypothetical leadership battle between Cook and Brown I would vote for Cook, but he would never win. Partly because Brown has the better reputation, more gravitas etc but also because Robin Cook does resemble a ginger gnome! :wow: Call the UK electorate fickle but I could not see them taking Cook as seriously as somebody like Brown.

As to Brown's connections with Kerry. This also appears to be true. A good example was a very good analysis of the US primaries some months ago by Ed Milliband, Treasury lackey. Not only was it very even-handed and objective but it was also resoundingly pro-Kerry. If the rumours of Brown's connections with Kerry are true then I for one am not about to complain. :-) Better that than Blair's connections with Bush. :grr:

On a side note it should be noted that the woman at the centre of the Kerry affair allegations also used to work for Liberal Democrat MP Nick Harvey. He was on the news last night saying that she was quite normal and all that seeming quite shocked at the whole muckraking episode.

[regnaD kciN]

2. Ah, yes...good old Tony Blair...

...George Bush's best buddy. Previously Bill Clinton's best buddy.

Somehow, I think he and Kerry would relate to each other just fine...

[charlie]

3. Oh my Gawd

Is this speculation beyond the pale or really plausible conjecture?

If this notion has merit, one major result the author didn't mention was the enhancement of Dubya's stature and credibility by having Blair at his side. Tony's self-serving actions did Bush an immeasurable amount of good.

I've been pretty disgusted with Blair for a long while. But if this is true, that his support was driven by nothing more than domestic electoral calculus, what I feel for the man is well beyond hate.

I'd like to see him strapped to a boat anchor and dropped into a septic tank.

A public one.

In a heavily-trafficked park.

[AP]

18. Bush is never responsible for his own actions to many around here.

Don't you all remember election 2000? This is how Bush ran his campaign. If he didn't something wrong it was someone else's fault.

Why do we help him out by blaming Blair and IWR yes voters for Iraq?

Doesn't everyone see how absolutely absurd that is?

[T_i_B]

22. And Blair appears NEVER to be responsible for his own actions to you

Blair chose to play Saruman to Bush's Sauron in his lust for power and I see no point in not blaming Blair for something that is when all said and done his own fault as much as anyones. Blair made a massive mistake and it is our job as citizens to hold him to account for this.

There is no excuse for bad policies.

[AP]

27. What lust for power? He has a lust not to let the US destroy the economy

of the EU which would INEVITABLY lead to fascists taking control of every EU government, which would then ensure that the EU would never form a strong counterbalance to the US golbal hegemony.

This is so unbelievably obvious.

[Capt_Nemo]

30. AP, before the US would "destroy" the EU economy, the US

would have to pay the EU all it owes it, plus learn to live without
the capital influx from EU that helps it cope with the deficits and
the debt.

Ever heard of Mutualy Assured Destruction?

And I guarantee you the US would end up very much worse off than the
EU. I say, bring it on!

on edit: I meant "learn to live without"

[AP]

31. They want to hold it back, just like they want to hold back their own

middle and working class.

Head above water. That's all they want. They want everyone working for the man. And the man's last name is Bush.

[DaisyUCSB]

4. Is there another Labour politician who could replace him?

Obviously alot of people here dislike Blair JUST because of the war. I don't get that kind of reasoning, but I know it's out there. To me, although I'm no neocon or anything, he's a hard guy not to like, because I don't think he's a neocon either. If as many people think there will someday be a head of the EU I'd rather it be him than Gerhard Shroder or Jaque Shirac

[AndyTiedye]

5. Then What the 7734 IS He?!?!!

If Bliar is not a neocon,
and hasn't been taken over by pod people,
then What the 7734 IS he doing?!???
Is Bush* blackmailing him?

[AP]

17. Greg Pallast wrote in TBDMCB that Blair was visisted by

Murdoch's top lobbyist and told that Murdoch and Bush noticed how vociferous he was in support of Al Gore, and that he should be careful.

Blair hasn't been blackmailed, but he's operating within a system that is still not totall democratic (Britain, after years of Tory rule is still set up to do the bidding for the super rich and of the arms dealers, bankers and media barrons) and Blair has to step lightly, and walk a narrow line.

He has to make it more democratic (which he's been doing pretty well -- increasing wealth among the bottom three quintiles at a faster rate than the top two, and the highest rate among the bottom quintile, and lowering unemployment, and increasing salaries, and his education plan is very democratic, even if many brits don't understand why). He has to lay the seeds for a stronger democracy before he can challenge the will of the US.

Another thing to remeber is that Rumsfield was UPSET when the British decided to support the US. The US wanted to go in along, and they didn't want an EU member in there looking after EU interests. Part of the reason for going into Iraq was to control the spigot of the fuel of EU economic development so that the EU couldn't be an effective economic competitor, which allows the US to create an uncompetitive economy for itself which delivers wealth only to the richest Americans.

If the US had to compete with the EU and Russian and Asia and South America, it would have to do it by building up middle class wealth, which means lesss power for the ruling Republican class. That's why Bush prefers to sabotage other countries' economies. And that's what Blair is fighting effectively -- he's not letting the US sabotage the EU economy.

[DeepModem Mom]

6. I loved Tony, too, and doggedly stayed with him until...

I watched him live one day on UK tv at a ceremony honoring British war dead, and a split-screen was opened up showing a concurrent remembrance by British soldiers in Iraq. In my opinion, he made a deal with the devil when he threw in his lot with George W. Bush. Gordon Brown, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, could, and may well, replace him.

On edit: Brown is, of course, the Labour government's Chancellor of the Exchequer -- not a Conservative.

[T_i_B]

7. Blair's domestic & other foreign policies

are every bit as Neo-Con as his Iraq policy. PFI, Foundation Hospitals, Tuition Fees, immigrant bashing al are all right wing policies. Any of you who don't belive that Blair is a right winger should take a good look at this for instance.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1116854,00.html

Spare a thought this bleak new year for all those who rely on charity. Open your hearts, for example, to a group of people who, though they live in London, are in such desperate need of handouts that last year they received £7.6m in foreign aid. The Adam Smith Institute, the ultra-rightwing lobby group, now receives more money from Britain's Department for International Development (DfID) than Liberia or Somalia, two of the most desperate nations on Earth.

Are the members of the Adam Smith Institute starving? Hardly. They work in plush offices in Great Smith Street, just around the corner from the Houses of Parliament. They hold lavish receptions and bring in speakers from all over the world. Big business already contributes generously to this good cause.

It gets what it pays for. The institute's purpose is to devise new means for corporations to grab the resources that belong to the public realm. Its president, Madsen Pirie, claims to have invented the word privatisation. His was the organisation that persuaded the Conservative government to sell off the railways, deregulate the buses, introduce the poll tax, cut the top rates of income tax, outsource local government services and start to part-privatise the national health service and the education system. "We propose things," Pirie once boasted, "which people regard as being on the edge of lunacy. The next thing you know, they're on the edge of policy." In this spirit, his institute now calls for the privatisation of social security, the dismantling of the NHS and a shift from public to private education. It opposes government spending on everything, in other words, except the Adam Smith Institute.

[Spider Jerusalem]

20. Yes, "New Labour" seems awfully like the second coming of Thatcherism.

"Kinder and gentler", though, to borrow a phrase from George Bush's father. Maggie was insane; I'm not sure what Tony's excuse is.

[ludwigb]

10. Cook comes to mind....

I'm sure there are other potential candidates. The British appreciate Labor for their economic achievements, but the war dishonesty will drive many votes to the conservatives, while ideological leftists and war opponents increasingly have no place to go but the Liberal party. Replacing Blair with Cook helps mend these problems.

[RogueTrooper]

12. No way on Cookie

he is far to loathed in the Labour Party to ever be it's leader. Besides, despite his principled objections to the Iraq War still managed to gorge himself at the Iraq reconstruction trough.

The Blairites are coalescing around Hillary Benn. The Brownites are still with their man.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

13. Truth:

If ever there was a US presidential election that exposes the lazy lie that it does not matter which man wins, it is this one.

[DeepModem Mom]

15. Amen, brother!

[AP]

16. This is such BS. Blair is praying a Dem wins.

And he'd be happy enough with Kerry.

Bush planned to use the Niger story to hurt Blair. Bush is trying to undermine Blair's government. Blair's knowledge of this is WHY he called an early election as soon as Bush won (which would ensure that he might not have to run again with a media doing Bush's bidding in an landscape controlled by Bush).

This article is idiotic speculation that's simply trying to drive people to believe the unbelievable.

[T_i_B]

21. I would not be so optimistic

They were already gearing up to support Bush in the event of Dean winning and it appears that the arselicking of Bush is to continue.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,1121790,00.html

New Labour allies of Tony Blair are becoming alarmed at the prospect of a Howard Dean US presidential candidacy, fearing it will create formidable tensions in the traditional transatlantic Democrat-Labour alliance.

Amid concerns that a Dean presidential campaign would be dominated by attacks on the Bush-Blair invasion of Iraq, one ally of the prime minister has suggested that he would prefer anyone but Mr Dean as president, although in public Mr Blair will be careful to ensure Labour and Downing Street are seen as neutral.

Mr Dean, originally planning to campaign on child development and healthcare, kickstarted his campaign by claiming President Bush, and by implication Tony Blair, had misled their electorates on the nature of the military threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Mr Dean has highlighted the Bush administration's discredited claim that Saddam was seeking to import uranium from Niger.

"I don't think it's OK to mislead people, whether it's deliberate or inadvertent," he said. "I thought it was fundamentally wrong for the president to mislead the American people on this uranium business."

[AP]

25. This article just proves a pattern of BS. I read that when it first came

out and found it pretty stupid. No named sources are there?

And Dean is alarming.

A friend of mine talked to Chuck Schumer recently, and he found Dean kind of alarming, and Schumer is no Tory.

I'm sure this article took a sentiment which is sensible and spun it in a way to tell a lie about labour.

[T_i_B]

29. Of course their is no named sources

That is how "new" labour works. We have seen this pattern so many times before when Downing Street has been stabbing the likes of Mo Mowlem and David Clark in the back. Off the record breifings that end up as newspaper articles, sources never named but close to Blair. When this sort of thing first started happening I kept dismissing it as cobblers only to see the rumours about reshuffles and budget policies etc come true. Not Good if you ask me.

Here is another article, again about Dean but which again can be applied to Kerry to a large degree.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1123444,00.html

Could anything expose the oddness of Tony Blair's politics more starkly? Faced with the prospect of a popular centre-left American Democrat taking on one of the most reactionary Republican presidents in recent history, this British Labour government isn't celebrating with fireworks; it is sending out distress signals. No 10 is against the amiable Democratic frontrunner, Howard Dean, and is for the grim Republican, George W. Wouldn't it be terrible, Blair's people are whispering, if the Democrats plumped for a lefty?

If Dean, or Clark, attacks Bush for an ill-thought-out and dishonest war, those are criticisms of Blair as well. If a Democratic candidate was able to make these criticisms, and appeal to hardcore Democratic voters, and then oust Bush, it would be an answer to the Blair excuse that you can only win from the right.

Blair is now left crossing his fingers or praying for a US president who is against Kyoto, who has been bad on trade issues, who remains a "big oil" hawk, who despises the EU, who has implemented massive tax cuts for the rich and who has channelled spending into another huge military build-up. For all the fine words, his impact on the Middle East peace process has been zero. With the possible exception of a programme to fight Aids in Africa, there is no progressive issue in the world where he isn't on the wrong side.

[AP]

32. Actually, that's how the British press acts. Right? Hutton Report, anyone?

[T_i_B]

34. Ah, the Hutton Report

Are you seriously going to claim that the Hutton report was not a whitewash? The Hutton Report is available in UK bookshops if you want to read it. I can assure you that it is a singularly poor judgement which I have yet to see defended from the charge of whitewash.

This article should give you a few clues as to why Hutton's conclusion that the Emperor Tony is not in fact as naked as the day he was born but is in fact wearing the finest new clothes is commonly seen as bullshit. I suggest you take a few moments to read it properly.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1136400,00.html

Quite simply, Hutton did not, in the legal phrase, take due cognisance of the obvious: the political and journalistic cultures of Britain were both responsible for Kelly's death. Anyone who paid attention to the inquiry understands that, and even the intelligence services are open-mouthed at Hutton's credulity when it came to assessing the motives and methods of the political establishment. Hutton's inquiry and report are so distant as to appear unrelated.

Was it their lack of judgment, or a failure of process, that caused the report to appear without, for example, giving due weight to Newsnight reporter Susan Watts's evidence that Kelly had made allegations to her - as well as Andrew Gilligan - about Campbell's role in preparing the September dossier; without underlining Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon's inconsistent testimony; without highlighting the grave doubts expressed by Kelly's colleagues at defence intelligence about the dossier; without asking the Prime Minister to account for his remarks on a plane trip immediately after Kelly's death; and without inquiring to any significant degree how Tom Baldwin of the Times acquired Kelly's name? Are we mad, or is it Lord Hutton?

At the heart of the process is a mysterious lack of logic. On the one hand Hutton spent weeks listening to evidence about the preparation of the Government's case against Saddam in the September dossier, but when it came to writing his report he rejected the need to address the issue of the dossier's truth. 'A question of such wide import ... is not one which falls within my terms of reference.'

Two points need to be made:

1. If he was not going to rule on this, why go into the facts at such length?

2. The truth of the dossier's contents is the essence of the circumstances of Kelly's death because that issue propelled the BBC and Campbell to escalate their running battle to open war. Owning the truth was what that was all about.

[Finch]

23. as somone who's been to the uk a fair bit

Speaking as someone who has spent a hell of a lot of time in the UK… the article seems to have it pretty well nailed… its not the best argument I’ve seen for the Blair- Bush dependency on one another but it gets the point across… these days Blair is generally disliked its just the right in the UK is in utter tatters and has only recently begun to reassert its self under the leadership of the capable former Minister Michael Howard… amongst Labour Party members while there is hardly any desire to forcible evict Tony Blair from number 10 there is a sense that things will be better once he is gone and a more left leaning Labour Leader replaces him… in all probability this next leader will be the present Chancellor Gordon Brown and slightly dour Scotsman who while his rhetoric seems to be to the left of Blair’s he is only marginally more leftwing than his old partner and has been instrumental in gain support for the Labour Government from the traditionally conservative finical community in the UK as well as the “city”… it is also interesting that Brown has a long friendship with John Kerry, Ted Kennedy and Bob Shrum (Shrum having introduced him to both)… a Kerry win would simply act to reinforced the sense with the government that the “age of Brown” is coming… I heard someone say it further up the thread PM Brown and President Kerry sounds like a good team…

[AP]

24. Blair doesn't want to be PM forever, and he's a patriot who cares about

the citizens of the UK. He wouldn't prefer Bush so that he can be in power in a world in which Bush is constantly trying to get Tories in power.

This article is just BS which is trying to make Blair appear to be a Tory.

And I think I can one-up you on "visiting the UK," but, in anonymous forums, I don't see the value in claiming biographical details take the place of what the argument itself isn't delivering.

[RogueTrooper]

26. The Brownies are muckraking

they have been peddling this story around the British press for the last couple of weeks. I agree with AP, Blair does not want Bush to win in November.

[Finch]

33. Ap

Your right about it being hard to verify what folks on this board actually are and have done when its all anonymous… but I am using my old uk email account for this board… if it at all help I was born in the uk and go over there either to see family or on work… but that’s by the by…

But good to see a fellow Edwards supporter… still hoping against hope for a strong second in WI and for this race to not be all but over in the morning… well better break out the caffeine rich beverages ASAP...it may be a long night... oh i forgot the networks will call it at about seven... still on tenterhooks though...
:scared: