Prime Minister Tony Blair has dismayed his friends and delighted his political foes, by a number of shocking blunders over the United Kingdom’s policy toward the current conflict in the Middle East. Not since he took the country to war in Iraq, on President George Bush’s coattails, has his political judgment been so astonishingly and dangerously at fault.
The context is important. Tony Blair is likely to announce either at the Labour party conference this autumn or next spring that he is stepping down. Thus toward the end of his regime, that started with his great election victory in 1997, he seems to feel he can ‘do his own thing’ and ignore the waves of criticism that are pouring over his government and party. He has set himself at odds with public opinion in a manner that borders on the reckless. The government was already suffering in the opinion polls after a number of embarrassing failures on the domestic front.
For many years No. 10 Downing Street has been at odds with the foreign office over Middle East policy. Senior foreign office diplomats are traditionally regarded as being too supportive of the Arabs, and not sufficiently concerned with the importance of the Jewish lobby in the United Kingdom, for both main political parties, particularly in the sensitive area of finance. I wrote much the same when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.
Margaret Beckett, the new and unimpressive foreign secretary, who, when offered the job — one of the top appointments in Britain — replied, she told the press later, with a four a letter swear word, has got off to a seriously bad start backing the prime minister’s out on a limb stance.
Three times she has lost her temper in interviews. Behind the scenes the foreign office has, however, been trying to change the prime minister’s thinking in leaked e-mails.
As soon as the conflict erupted in the Middle East Blair decided to back the White House all the way. Blair has stuck out for weeks against calling for a cease-fire. French President Jacques Chirac has described Israel’s daily bombing of Lebanon as “completely disproportionate”; the prime minister refused to use the word “disproportionate”. To the horror of the foreign office, Britain today finds itself in the same doghouse internationally as Israel and America. Historically this is a most unusual position for Britain to be in. It represents a huge diplomatic failure.
The United Kingdom should not be looking to the United States, rather than the European Union, to learn how to handle Israel. The United States is concerned in the Middle East over the security of Israel and oil, while Europe has the Arab world as its neighbor and has long and still important historical ties. Even in the age of global terrorism the Arab world is far more important to the members of the European Union than it is to the United States.
Blair, while correctly supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, is now close to backing Israel right or wrong, and the United Kingdom is still selling arms to Israel. Entirely forgetting his achievements in Northern Ireland in getting the IRA to become involved in the political process, he seems to think that if Israel is given sufficient time it can destroy Hezbollah. It cannot. Israel’s assault on Hezbollah is bringing Hezbollah massive regional support, and weakening the elected government of Lebanon.
Sir Stephen Wall until last year was an adviser to the prime minister on Europe, having previously been Britain’s ambassador to the European Union. He asked on July 26: “Could the prime minister really not speak up for the simple proposition that the slaughter of innocent people in Lebanon, the destruction of their country and the ruin of half a million lives were wrong and should stop immediately.”
He believed the United Kingdom’s moral authority was being damaged by its too close relationship with America. The House of Commons is up for its long summer recess and there are no plans to recall it. However, there has been disquiet in the Cabinet. Prior to the Iraq War of 2003 the prime minister, in the main, had Cabinet support. Today he does not have the same authority.
Jack Straw, the Leader of the Commons and former foreign secretary, has openly broken ranks by describing Israel’s actions as disproportionate. Asians form 18 percent of the population of his Blackburn constituency and I am sure, like many other senior politicians, he will be alarmed at the result of Britain’s open support for Israel’s bombing on moderate Muslim opinion in Britain.
I suspect the anger in the Labour Parliamentary Party will spill over into Labour party’s conference in September. A party leader ignores such concerns at his peril. Blair is now seriously out of touch and seems not to care.
