Madness and the Special Relationship

Tony Blair's comments to the Australian Parliament about the "madness" of European anti-Americanism gives us an interesting insight into his thinking.

Is Blair really so frightened that the US will "walk away" that he wants his fellow European leaders and the media to back peddle on their criticisms of the Bush administration? If there's any "madness" here Prime Minister, it's surely in the fear that we shouldn't be too critical of the US, for fear of losing the Americans' support.

If the special relationship is worth having it has to be robust enough to withstand criticism where it's warranted - rolling over and letting Bush and Co. get away with anything they want is not being anti-American, rather it's about fighting our corner and defending our side of the relationship, which should be part and parcel of the free exchange of ideas Blair also mentioned in the same speech.

Blair does Parkie, with God in the audience...

Interesting to see that Tony Blair, Britain's Labour Prime Minister and, some say far too close friend of President Bush, fears divine judgement over his decision to go to war in Iraq.

While he seems happy to discuss this on a chatshow (far less confrontational than Parliament) he's strangely silent on the ongoing denial of justice at Guantanamo, which he only "hopes" the US will get round to closing "soon".

Quite how he'll answer for all this at the final judgement is anyone's guess, but given his much vaunted up-coming handover to Gordon Brown, one thing is for sure: he'll escape the judgement of the British electorate yet again.