duck
05-25-2004, 02:49 PM
"Bush to Howard: hands off Tony
Peter Oborne reveals that an operation has been launched within the White House to protect the President’s most important ally, and that the Tories are under pressure to give the Prime Minister an easy ride
For months Westminster has been alive with talk about the potential damage that defeat for George Bush in this November’s Presidential contest would inflict on Tony Blair’s standing in the Labour party. This just goes to show how parochial Westminster political discourse has become. The much larger and more interesting issue — what would it mean for President Bush if, as now looks possible, Tony Blair will be driven out of office over the summer? — has been neglected. The President himself is scared stiff.
It is easy to understand his alarm. George Bush has already lost José Maria Aznar, the former prime minister of Spain, from his Iraq Coalition. He is all but resigned to the looming disappearance of a second ally, Prime Minister John Howard of Australia. Howard, once described by Bush as a ‘close personal friend of mine’, played a significant role in giving some international credibility to the Coalition before the invasion. He is now paying the price for defying domestic opinion. Though the Australian economy is rosy, Howard’s Conservatives are crashing in the polls.
But the most important leader of the international Coalition, by far, was and remains Tony Blair, the only foreign leader of whom American voters are even dimly aware. In recent weeks the Republican party has woken up, with a gulp of horror, to the prospect of a Blair defenestration. Specifically, it fears that the British Prime Minister could damage George Bush’s international standing by quitting before the November Presidential election. Many Republicans are not too bothered about what happens afterwards.
So an operation has been launched within the White House, the State Department and above all the Republican party to keep Tony Blair in office. This takes a number of forms. George Bush understands that extravagant praise for his close friend no longer serves a useful purpose. There are likely to be fewer tributes from now on to Tony Blair as a ‘stand-up kind of guy’ and similarly effusive references that now litter the public record. The White House fully understands that it may become necessary, for the purposes of domestic consumption, to allow the Prime Minister to place a distance between himself and the White House. It is even happy to foster the myth, desperately being placed in the public domain by allies of 10 Downing Street, that the Prime Minister’s strong private relationship with President Bush gives him great ‘influence’ over US policy.
This is at best an unproven proposition, as policy-makers on both sides of the Atlantic know. One senior official privately describes telling Blair, ahead of a pre-war meeting with George Bush, that Britain’s standing in Washington was now so high that he could make practically any demands he liked, and that they would probably be granted. A list was provided. The official was aghast when the British Prime Minister did not raise a single one of them at the meeting which followed. Later he described the meeting, and his feeling of utter amazement, to Jack Straw. The Foreign Secretary shrugged his shoulders. ‘That’s the nature of the beast,’ he said.
But the United States is not only eager to do what it can to ease Tony Blair’s perilous domestic isolation. It is keen to offer what practical help it can by exercising secret pressure at Westminster. The Republicans are now stretching themselves to the limit to put pressure on the British Tory party to give Tony Blair the easiest possible ride. This kind of direct intervention in British politics by the United States is far from unprecedented. In 1987 President Ronald Reagan helped out Margaret Thatcher by humiliating Neil Kinnock when he made an official visit to the White House. Last year Vice President **** Cheney rang up the then Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith to ‘thank him for his support’ after the keenly contested eve-of-conflict vote on the Iraq war.
Now the same kind of pressure is being applied, only in reverse. The White House regrets that the new leader of the Conservative party, Michael Howard, is failing to give unstinting support for the Iraq war and Tony Blair. There have been as yet no menacing calls from the Vice President. But Michael Howard has been left in no doubt that he is in the doghouse. ‘The White House hates Michael,’ says one senior Conservative official, perhaps with exaggeration. ‘It feels that he is not standing shoulder to shoulder with Tony Blair. It is furious with him.’ The official says that Howard has received ‘quite a few indirect messages’ from the administration to the effect that it would be better if he stayed his tongue.
Another member of the Tory leader’s office says that the White House ‘has been letting it be known to us that we are not being supportive enough on the war’. This official adds that the American administration does not feel that the Conservatives are ‘selling the message’. The truth is that George Bush only has the haziest idea of British domestic politics. He once referred to William Hague, when he was Conservative party leader, as ‘that guy with the runner’ — a reference to Seb Coe, Hague’s chief of staff, without whom he rarely left his office. In so far as George Bush has a view of the Conservative party, he thinks it should be out there telling the story, a subsidiary branch of the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square. (The US Embassy, however, is also out of favour in Washington, where it is blamed for not putting the American case for war with nearly enough vim. The situation is not helped by the fact that Will Farish, a vanishing figure in any case, has been obliged for imperative domestic reasons to spend a great deal of time away from London.)
Michael Howard is by no stretch of the imagination the only Conservative politician who is being targeted by the US. Colleagues say that Michael Ancram, the shadow Foreign Secretary, has been told informally by the State Department of its disappointment at his attitude. The former Conservative party leader, Iain Duncan Smith, has received a message concerning growing US alarm about the increase in ‘anti-Americanism’, a strong hint that the Conservatives should do more to help out Tony Blair over the war. Duncan Smith spent last week in the United States, where he enjoyed long meetings with Vice President Cheney and the National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. ..."
Peter Oborne reveals that an operation has been launched within the White House to protect the President’s most important ally, and that the Tories are under pressure to give the Prime Minister an easy ride
For months Westminster has been alive with talk about the potential damage that defeat for George Bush in this November’s Presidential contest would inflict on Tony Blair’s standing in the Labour party. This just goes to show how parochial Westminster political discourse has become. The much larger and more interesting issue — what would it mean for President Bush if, as now looks possible, Tony Blair will be driven out of office over the summer? — has been neglected. The President himself is scared stiff.
It is easy to understand his alarm. George Bush has already lost José Maria Aznar, the former prime minister of Spain, from his Iraq Coalition. He is all but resigned to the looming disappearance of a second ally, Prime Minister John Howard of Australia. Howard, once described by Bush as a ‘close personal friend of mine’, played a significant role in giving some international credibility to the Coalition before the invasion. He is now paying the price for defying domestic opinion. Though the Australian economy is rosy, Howard’s Conservatives are crashing in the polls.
But the most important leader of the international Coalition, by far, was and remains Tony Blair, the only foreign leader of whom American voters are even dimly aware. In recent weeks the Republican party has woken up, with a gulp of horror, to the prospect of a Blair defenestration. Specifically, it fears that the British Prime Minister could damage George Bush’s international standing by quitting before the November Presidential election. Many Republicans are not too bothered about what happens afterwards.
So an operation has been launched within the White House, the State Department and above all the Republican party to keep Tony Blair in office. This takes a number of forms. George Bush understands that extravagant praise for his close friend no longer serves a useful purpose. There are likely to be fewer tributes from now on to Tony Blair as a ‘stand-up kind of guy’ and similarly effusive references that now litter the public record. The White House fully understands that it may become necessary, for the purposes of domestic consumption, to allow the Prime Minister to place a distance between himself and the White House. It is even happy to foster the myth, desperately being placed in the public domain by allies of 10 Downing Street, that the Prime Minister’s strong private relationship with President Bush gives him great ‘influence’ over US policy.
This is at best an unproven proposition, as policy-makers on both sides of the Atlantic know. One senior official privately describes telling Blair, ahead of a pre-war meeting with George Bush, that Britain’s standing in Washington was now so high that he could make practically any demands he liked, and that they would probably be granted. A list was provided. The official was aghast when the British Prime Minister did not raise a single one of them at the meeting which followed. Later he described the meeting, and his feeling of utter amazement, to Jack Straw. The Foreign Secretary shrugged his shoulders. ‘That’s the nature of the beast,’ he said.
But the United States is not only eager to do what it can to ease Tony Blair’s perilous domestic isolation. It is keen to offer what practical help it can by exercising secret pressure at Westminster. The Republicans are now stretching themselves to the limit to put pressure on the British Tory party to give Tony Blair the easiest possible ride. This kind of direct intervention in British politics by the United States is far from unprecedented. In 1987 President Ronald Reagan helped out Margaret Thatcher by humiliating Neil Kinnock when he made an official visit to the White House. Last year Vice President **** Cheney rang up the then Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith to ‘thank him for his support’ after the keenly contested eve-of-conflict vote on the Iraq war.
Now the same kind of pressure is being applied, only in reverse. The White House regrets that the new leader of the Conservative party, Michael Howard, is failing to give unstinting support for the Iraq war and Tony Blair. There have been as yet no menacing calls from the Vice President. But Michael Howard has been left in no doubt that he is in the doghouse. ‘The White House hates Michael,’ says one senior Conservative official, perhaps with exaggeration. ‘It feels that he is not standing shoulder to shoulder with Tony Blair. It is furious with him.’ The official says that Howard has received ‘quite a few indirect messages’ from the administration to the effect that it would be better if he stayed his tongue.
Another member of the Tory leader’s office says that the White House ‘has been letting it be known to us that we are not being supportive enough on the war’. This official adds that the American administration does not feel that the Conservatives are ‘selling the message’. The truth is that George Bush only has the haziest idea of British domestic politics. He once referred to William Hague, when he was Conservative party leader, as ‘that guy with the runner’ — a reference to Seb Coe, Hague’s chief of staff, without whom he rarely left his office. In so far as George Bush has a view of the Conservative party, he thinks it should be out there telling the story, a subsidiary branch of the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square. (The US Embassy, however, is also out of favour in Washington, where it is blamed for not putting the American case for war with nearly enough vim. The situation is not helped by the fact that Will Farish, a vanishing figure in any case, has been obliged for imperative domestic reasons to spend a great deal of time away from London.)
Michael Howard is by no stretch of the imagination the only Conservative politician who is being targeted by the US. Colleagues say that Michael Ancram, the shadow Foreign Secretary, has been told informally by the State Department of its disappointment at his attitude. The former Conservative party leader, Iain Duncan Smith, has received a message concerning growing US alarm about the increase in ‘anti-Americanism’, a strong hint that the Conservatives should do more to help out Tony Blair over the war. Duncan Smith spent last week in the United States, where he enjoyed long meetings with Vice President Cheney and the National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. ..."