Tony Blair As George Bush's Watch Dog

Contemporary Review, April, 2005 by Tony Thomas

TONY BLAIR AS GEORGE BUSH'S WATCH DOG

The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency. James Naughtie. Macmillan. [pounds sterling]18.99. xvii 251 pages. ISBN 1-4050-5001-2.

Perhaps the holders of television licences ought to start demanding royalties. Journalists at the BBC are commissioned by publishing houses to write books at a furious pace, but not because they have anything particularly original or profound to say. They are signed up on the assumption that sales figures in the bookshops will be boosted by the way exposure on radio and television converts them into national celebrities. It helps, too, that most associated travel and research costs are paid for, indirectly, by the viewers and listeners. Little wonder then that James Naughtie, a personable interviewer on BBC Radio 4's 'Today' programme has, like John Simpson, Kate Adie, John Humphrys, George Alagaiah and other BBC journalists, found his way into hard-back, first with an account of Tony Blair's 'political marriage' with Gordon Brown and now with an examination of Mr Blair's diplomatic/military alliance with America.

As a 'Today' interviewer, he is necessarily a generalist whose quick-swot knowledge is more broad than deep. You cannot, via James Naughtie's look at Tony Blair's dealings with Presidents Clinton and Bush, expect to get the serious insight into Anglo-American relations provided in the recent past by such specialist correspondents as The Guardian's Alistair Cooke, The Times's Louis Heren or The Economist's John Midgley.

There are, though, compensations. Through his position on 'Today', Mr Naughtie enjoys ready access to Blair's closest political allies and most dangerous foes. For an observer of high politics, this is an immeasurable advantage. He is far more a political insider than most MPs or even, in an increasingly presidential British system of government, than some Cabinet ministers. As a result of his privileged position, his reading of the Blair-Clinton and especially Blair-Bush relationship is both well informed and subtle. The religious faith that Bush and Blair share does not, he believes, do much to explain their intimacy. Far more important is the trust Blair has earned in the White House, first as a robust friend and then (pace Liberal Democrats) as a prophetic one. In James Naughtie's book, far from being America's poodle, the British Prime Minister emerges as America's Alsatian, a watchdog which forewarns of danger and then helps combat it.

It was Tony Blair, the author recalls, who alerted Clinton to the costs of inaction in Kosovo and helped persuade him to intervene against the Serbs. Then, in a speech to the Economic Club in Chicago in 1999, it was Mr Blair again who, with the Taliban in Afghanistan as well as success in the Balkans in mind, argued for a policy of pre-emptive strikes once all diplomatic options had been exhausted. With the advantage of hindsight, Bush came to see Tony Blair as a positive force. The Texan recalled how while the 'Euro-ninnys' argued a defensive case--warning against aggression, playing down threats, promoting caution--Blair sounded the alarm. When 9/11 came the British Prime Minister was seen by Bush as one of the prophets who had predicted the doom, and therefore who could be counted on to understand its consequences.

The consequences for Tony Blair himself, however, have turned out to be much less dire than Mr Naughtie assumed when he sent this manuscript to the publishers. He had just interviewed the Prime Minister and had come away from Number 10 Downing Street convinced that the Labour leader was just about kaput politically. Like others in the summer of 2004, he underestimated Tony Blair's powers of recovery, perhaps because he was unaware how much the Prime Minister's depression stemmed from family troubles, not political ones.

Never mind. The book offers ample strengths to set against this misjudgement. It is well written, fast paced and contains some nice asides. We learn, for instance, that the Quai d'Orsay in Paris feared that even worse American insults were in the offing when 'French fries' were renamed 'freedom fries' on the House menu on Capitol Hill and French wines were replaced in New York restaurants by wines from Oregon and (quelle horreur!) Pennsylvania. 'Things are so bad', a French official mused, 'that I have heard that there is a terrible rumour running around the Quai that the President himself may even stop reading Marcel Proust'.

Tony Thomas is, with Edmund Fawcett, the co-author of America, Americans published by HarperCollins in 1983.