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Blair era nears end

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Submitted by administrator on Tue, 09/12/2006 - 11:36

Editorial
Tony Blair's long tenure as Britain's prime minister will end within months. His ship of state ran aground on the treacherous reef of the Iraq war, widely condemned in Britain as "Bush's war." And Blair's recent refusal to back a cease-fire in Lebanon forced a few more rocks through the hull. Polling last month had Labor trailing the Tories, and Blair says he'll leave within 12 months.

To the chagrin of some of his Labor colleagues, Blair has not set a specific date for his exit from 10 Downing Street, but many think he'll leave after his 10th anniversary in office _ next May.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown expects to take over the job, but if Blair continues in office until next May, that succession could become less predictable. If a week is, as former Prime Minister Harold Wilson maintained, an eternity in politics, a few months is time enough for anything to happen.

Meanwhile, a big question in British politics remains where the country wishes to place itself around the North Atlantic. Blair, redubbing his party "New Labor," has kept Britain close to America. In the current political winds, both the Labor and Conservative parties have to decide how much more integrated they want to be with the European Union.

Britons are rueful now about Blair for taking up George W. Bush's evangelical promotion of democracy in the Mideast, but there's little reason to think that they'll go as far as, say, the French in making deals with unpleasant regimes in that region.

Then there are the problems associated with Britain's huge and restive Muslim population, a few members of which terrorized the country this summer and last.

For many Americans, who have admired Tony Blair for his forthright and eloquent stand against terrorists, especially in contrast to the sometimes less-than-articulate utterances of their own president, it is sad to see him hounded from office by his own party. It brings to mind the defeat of Winston Churchill's government in July 1945, just after the defeat of the Nazis. History might be more appreciative of Tony Blair than the Laborites are.