March 16, 2004, 8:36 a.m.
Does Blair Prefer President Kerry?
Tony doesn't, but his wife, staff, and party do.
— Jim Geraghty, a reporter with States News Service in Washington, is a frequent contributor to NRO and a commentator on London's ITN News.
So John Kerry is in the midst of a firestorm, having, by first reports, claimed that he's met with foreign leaders "who can't go out and say this publicly, but boy, they look at you and say, 'You've got to win this, you've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy, things like that.'"
Kerry refused to identify the names of these leaders, but it's easy to guess that Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder are probably among them. Of course, Spain's new socialist prime minister, Jose Luis "Let's Get Out of Iraq And Placate al Qaeda" Zapatero said before the Madrid bombings, "The first thing I will do when I am elected is to go to the United States and support John Kerry."
But the most interesting speculation surrounds Bush's most prominent European ally: Does British Prime Minister Tony Blair, leader of the left-leaning Labour party, prefer a Democratic president?
Publicly, 10 Downing Street insists Blair is neutral on a decision that is the responsibility the American people. Blair has discouraged senior Labour figures from getting too involved with the race, or meeting with senior Democratic-party officials. He has instructed that only one Labour official, strategist Douglas Alexander, is to attend the Democratic convention in Boston.
The BBC squawked that Blair acted "odd" by not calling Kerry to congratulate him on winning the nomination, but Peter Riddell of the London Times attributed the prime minister's stance to pragmatism: "The whole point of Tony Blair is that he's interested in who's in power. He's not particularly interested in ideology."
The public mutual-admiration society between Bush and Blair make it hard to picture Blair rooting for a Bush defeat behind closed doors. But everyone else around Blair — including the U.K.'s "first lady" Cherie Blair — is rather openly pulling for Kerry.
Cherie Blair has never liked President Bush, and has barely hid her loathing of him. According to a Philip Stephens new book Tony Blair: The Making of a World Leader, Cherie "believed that Bush had stolen the White House from Gore," and asked her husband asked why they had to be "nice" to "those people." When the Bushes visited Britain in the summer of 2001, Mrs. Blair reportedly lectured the president on the immorality of death penalty in the U.S. In a speech last November, she called the White House's concerns about the International Criminal Court "not well founded" and last month she renewed her attack on America's use of the death penalty in a book review in the Catholic journal The Tablet.
Mrs. Blair's catty transnational progressivism is one thing. But Labour-party members providing serious strategic, media, and volunteer help to Kerry's campaign is another.
Last month, a reception was held at 10 Downing Street, for ministers and "progressive thinkers," including Cambridge professor Anthony Giddens, Blair's mentor on "Third Way" politics. Giddens spoke about the need for social democrats to defeat neoconservatism, and declared, "We need to get George Bush out of the White House."
The Edinburgh-based Scotsman newspaper states it flatly: "the Democrats are looking to London for help and Mr. Blair's allies are itching to help Kerry unseat President Bush." Gordon Brown, Blair's number-two and sometime Labour rival, is friends with Kerry strategist Bob Shrum. Veterans of the 1992 Clinton campaign gave advice to Blair's winning campaign on media spinning, polling, rapid-response, and other tactics; now the London crowd wants to return the favor.
A parliamentary motion was signed by a group of Blairite backbenchers welcoming Kerry's nomination. Some Labourites are warning Blair that he could be hurt if does anything perceived to be helpful to Bush, like show up in Washington this year to accept his Congressional Gold Medal.
"Blair has always said that Bush is a man he can do business with," wrote Kamal Ahmed, political editor of the Observer. "Many around him believe that it is about time that business came to an end."
The relationship between the Labourites and the Kerry team isn't perfect, obviously. It was whispered in the British press that Blair's team preferred North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who was perceived as more focused on domestic issues, less opposed to continuing the allied commitment in Iraq, and closer to Blair's "New Labour" ideology. And Kerry's recent protectionist rhetoric is reported to have bothered some trade ministers in the European Union. But from the BBC to the Labour side of the aisle of the House of Commons, the overwhelming preference is for the French-speaking Brahmin over the plain-speaking cowboy.
The decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power drove a deep and perhaps permanent wedge between Blair and his party. The reaction to Kerry merely mirrors this division, as the Kerry campaign appears to have sent warning shots across Blair's bow. In an interview in the Cardiff, Wales-based Western Mail, Steve Morgan, a Welsh political strategist handling foreign press for the Kerry campaign, threatened that "a victory for the Massachusetts senator would leave the prime minister out on a limb and facing a transatlantic time-bomb on Iraq."
Labourites in the United Kingdom have concluded a Kerry presidency is best for them. But it may not be the best for Tony Blair, who doesn't want to be standing alone as the only Western leader committed to completing the job in Iraq and aggressively fighting the war on terror. Can Blair really relish the day he stands beside the Massachusetts senator, who declared "there has been an exaggeration" of the threat from terrorism?
One wonders if that sharp divide might drive Blair to whisper to President Bush, "I can't go out and say this publicly, but boy, I look at you and say, 'You've got to win this, you've got to beat this guy...."
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