Politics
Blair helped
Bush win, and he will be rewarded
Peter Oborne
The most telling moment of an astonishing election night came
when the reporter Michael Crick interviewed American voters in a
Columbus bowling alley for the BBC election coverage. Here they
were: a representative collection of the stupid, ignorant and
frighteningly arrogant voters who had just decided the identity of
the most powerful man in the world. ‘Who did you vote for?’ asked
Crick. ‘For Blair and Bush,’ replied one Ohio man. As The Spectator
went to press, the exact numbers were unclear, but it looked as if
the result had been decided by no more than one or two percentage
points. Tony Blair is entitled to claim that those points were his,
and that he made the decisive difference in bringing about the Bush
victory.
It is a strange position for a British prime minister. Barely one
British voter in six wanted Bush back at the White House, yet Tony
Blair assiduously set about helping him. He is entitled to call one
chapter of his memoirs: ‘John Kerry: My Part in His Downfall’.
There will be many rewards for Mr Blair. George Bush is well
aware of the sacrifices the British Prime Minister has made and the
dangers he has run, not just with the British electorate but with
the Labour party. (The President knew of, and tolerated, the panicky
last-minute Downing Street approach to the Kerry camp through the
mediation of Philip Gould.) George Bush will be careful to repay the
favour. He knows how unpopular he is in Britain, and will be eager
to help Tony Blair assert an illusory independence from the White
House ahead of the general election.
‘Watch out for a carefully choreographed rift between Downing
Street and the White House,’ says one strategist. ‘A suitable
subject will be chosen, most likely the Kyoto accord.’ There will be
no presidential pressure for Tony Blair to make embarrassing visits
to Crawford, Texas, while carefully briefed articles by sympathetic
columnists will soon start to appear disclosing ‘frosty relations’
between Tony Blair and George Bush.
It’ll all be nonsense, of course. Tony Blair often speaks
privately of his place in history: no contribution has been greater
than making the British people international collaborators in George
Bush’s re-election to the White House.
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