Britain has a new prime minister in Gordon Brown but does this mean an early change in Britain’s tragically unswerving endorsement of the Bush White House’s Middle East policy? The immediate signs are not good. Brown is widely expected to call a snap election, probably in the autumn. It is domestic rather than foreign policy that wins votes. The new premier can therefore be expected to concentrate his first months in power on the presentation of his plans for UK health and education.
Foreign policy will come a distant second. He will probably initiate a review of the British presence within the US-led Coalition in Iraq in order to give himself breathing space for home affairs. Since the Brown spin machine was second only to that of Tony Blair, it is probable that careful hints of an early withdrawal will win favor with electors who now see the British military commitment for the disaster it always was. However, like US voters, the British are less interested in the appalling chaos into which the 2003 invasion has plunged Iraqis. When he considers the time right, Brown will have few political problems cutting and running, leaving behind only promises of aid and assistance and a treaty of friendship with Iraq’s beleaguered government.
If he wins a personal mandate in an early election, Brown will also be working toward a fresh relationship with the new incumbent in the White House. The lame duck Bush presidency has little to offer the new British premier and it is generally accepted that Brown will never share the same odd chemistry that Blair enjoyed with Bush. Europe is, however, an electoral issue in Britain. Brown could, if he chose, prompt his EU partners into a more vigorous role within the Quartet, independent of Washington. This might generate electoral support. But ironically Blair, as the Quartet’s Middle East envoy, might yet stymie such an initiative. No longer running Britain, Blair would almost certainly become even more of a mouthpiece for his friend George W. Bush, who has pushed so hard for him to have the Middle Eastern job. In Afghanistan, unless there are any significant reverses which would undermine electoral sympathy for NATO’s military support of the Karzai government, Brown will probably be content to let the policy ride. But the man who until yesterday directly ran Britain’s finances may already have earmarked a cutback in the UK military commitment to Kabul in order to save money for health and education back home. Such a mistake would not, however, be committed until after Brown had won his snap election.
After he addressed Parliament for the last time as premier, Blair was given a standing ovation by MPs of all parties. This extraordinary spectacle can only have been the recognition of a decade in power by a consummate politician whose ability to represent falsehood as truth and error as wisdom has rarely been rivaled. The reality of Blair’s ten years is one dominated by folly. Only in Northern Ireland, where he concluded a process started by the Conservative Major government and in Kosovo, can he claim successes. The rest was all spin.
