The Semi-Detached World Of
Tony Blair
Adrian Hamilton
in London
March 30. - Historians will find it difficult to grasp the sheer surrealism of
Mr Blair's performance. They will find it hard to recreate the extraordinary
sense of semi-detachment of the Prime Minister himself, the unreality of a
situation in which he seems at once determined to hang on to power and to act as
if he had already given it up.
On domestic affairs and foreign policy he has become a source of grand speeches,
setting out his philosophy and his aspirations for all the world as if he wasn't
part of the government at all but a lone warrior on a personal crusade. The
theme of all these speeches is that of Mr Blair the Reformer, the standard
bearer of "progressive" politics fighting bravely against the forces of
conservatism and backwardness. Whether it is city academies, national health
trusts, security or global warning, the message is the same. The world has
changed, globalisation is sweeping all before it, there is only one choice: go
with it or turn your face against it and fail.
Some describe it as his pursuit of a "legacy." Others interpret it as his agenda for continuing power. But the odd thing is that it's really neither. He doesn't harp on the achievements that would make a legacy. The speeches are made largely of philosophising, an almost continuous effort to try to put a shape on what he is up to, or what he represents.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the extraordinary series of three foreign speeches that the Prime Minister has embarked on, the first in London last week, the second in Australia this week and the third due in the USA early next month. What is extraordinary is not so much the content as the fact that they are billed as a trilogy of profound thinking, the recollections in tranquillity of a great statesman.
On the evidence of the two so far, they are almost Bushite in their simplicity and completely Bushite in their view of the world as divided between goodies (us) and baddies (them). This is the War on Terror vision of the world, in which we are fighting for universal values against those who wish to destroy us.
"Modernity" lies in pluralism and multi-nationalism and that it is Bush and Blair who are looking back to the imperial world of western mastery and Cold War divisions. But then it is probably pointless trying to explain that to the British Prime Minister, any more than the US President. He appears to have entered a nether world in which he is divorced not just from his own party but from reality.