Blair Disappoints US Media

BY dasu k| IN Media Practice | 01/05/2005
The liberal media are caught in a dilemma because they cannot welcome Blair for the same reasons as they continue to denounce Bush.
 

 

Dasu Krishnamoorty

There is not much enthusiasm here in the American liberal media for the British poll, mostly because many of them are convinced that Tony Blair will win a third spell of tenancy at 10 Downing Street. As an event, the British poll lacks two main ingredients of saleable content - suspense and sensation. For these newspapers, Blair is as good as George W. Bush except that Bush-baiters enjoyed the choice of Democrats as an alternative. The liberal media are caught in a dilemma because they cannot welcome Blair for the same reasons as they continue to denounce Bush. But opposition to the Labour Party would amount to backing the Conservatives, a greater evil. Tariq Ali has picturesquely described this tweedledum/tweedledee dilemma. He said, "The tribal notion that New Labour is somehow qualitatively better than the Tories is pure sentimentality."

On Iraq, Thomas Friedman rejects the Tariq Ali thesis and hands over a timely unguent to a media-battered Blair.  The News York Times, the newspaper of record, like others found room to thrash Blair for his Iraq and immigration policies that both Blair and Tory leader Michael Howard had glossed over in their campaigning because both parties had supported the Iraq war. "In this election the war is everywhere and nowhere," said the columnist Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian, comparing the British election with those last year in Spain and the United States. "While José María Aznar and George Bush were pounded by their electoral challengers over the conflict, Tony Blair enjoys a free pass from his chief rival, Michael Howard. Iraq is not exactly the lead item in any of the main party manifestos."

In his latest report from London, Times correspondent Alan Cowell reveals how particularly sensitive the Iraq issue was among antiwar middle-class Labour supporters, who, in his view, might well abstain from going to the polls in protest or vote for the opposition Liberal Democrats to vent their displeasure at the Labour party. But the mistrust of Blair spreads across the traditional Labour ranks to include blue-collar workers, too. Here Cowell supplies some hitherto undisclosed information on the prelude to the Iraq war. His London dispatch says that the Iraq debate had begun to revive when the Mail on Sunday newspaper reported that Britain`s attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, had privately advised Blair of six reasons why an invasion of Iraq might breach international law. That reported advice was never before made public and, the newspaper said, had not been shared with the British cabinet. However, at a press conference on Monday, Blair asserted "the advice was clear that the war was lawful."

Blair has done well on the economy side that, apart from his youth, will get him a third term. Therefore, the next best thing for the liberal media here was to take up issues like immigration to gain space for symbolic attack. The New York Times began by projecting the somnolent anti-war sentiment. But selecting a Muslim woman as the spokesperson has indirectly brought the immigration agenda to the fore. "Ms. Salma Yaqoob is now one of a handful of candidates fighting the mighty Labour electoral machine in the name of a tiny start-up movement called Respect -- feeding on the antiwar sentiment that consumed many Britons in the prelude to the conflict in 2003 and that lingers in the deep mistrust many voters avow toward Prime Minister Tony Blair. But opposition to the war itself, which particularly animates Ms. Yaqoob and many of her fellow Muslims, is rarely mentioned by the main contenders for power on the campaign trail," the Times report said.

Its correspondent Alan Cowell’s report from Birmingham is all about Muslim distrust of the Blair administration especially focusing on the war with Iraq. But the Muslim vote has only notional significance in the election. Writing for CounterPunch, Tariq Ali hurls himself on the side of the anti-war platform and says, "If Blair wins this election (as appears likely), he will claim, like Bush, that the country supports him in these difficult times. It is for this reason that those who opposed the war must think carefully before they cast their votes. Abstention is not a serious option. The aim should be to return an anti-war majority to the House of Commons. This requires tactical and intelligent voting in every constituency. So why not treat this election as special and take the politics of the broad anti-war front to the electoral arena? If the result is a hung parliament or a tiny Blair majority, it will be seen as a victory for our side."

Thomas Friedman does not agree. In an op-ed piece in the Times, he says he believes that history would rank Blair as one of the most important British prime ministers ever -- both for what he has accomplished at home and for what he has dared to do abroad. Friedman thinks that there is much the U.S. Democratic Party could learn from Blair. According to him, in deciding to throw in Britain`s lot with Bush on the Iraq war, Blair not only defied the overwhelming antiwar sentiment of his own party, but public opinion in Britain generally." Quoting Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a pro-Democratic U.S. think tank, Friedman said, "Blair risked complete self-immolation on a principle." Friedman said, "Blair has redefined British liberalism. He has made liberalism about embracing, managing and cushioning globalization, about embracing and expanding freedom - through muscular diplomacy where possible and force where necessary - and about embracing fiscal discipline."

Cowell reports, this time from Croydon, about the simmering unrest centred on Blair’s immigration policy that became a political football between the Labour Party and the Conservative Party. He writes, "The issue of immigration moved to the center of Britain’s election debate on Friday. The immigration debate is among the most emotional so far of the May 5 election, tapping murky reservoirs of fear and suspicion made all the more toxic by reports in the rightwing newspapers that Britain is being "swamped" by waves of illegal immigrants and failed asylum seekers." Blair defended himself arguing that the rules and systems that are in place are fair to those legitimate immigrants who make such a major contribution to the British economy. Tory leader Michael Howard, himself the child of immigrants, told reporters that immigration had increased threefold under Blair and that it was straining the nation’s resources. 

Though they do not make much difference to the election outcome, the Muslims figure also in the Washington Times columns. Writing from London, their correspondent Al Webb says, "British Muslims are furious with their Prime Minister Tony Blair over the war in Iraq and his proposed anti-terrorism laws they say are aimed at least in part at them, but they are still expected to help elect him to a third term in office in two weeks." Webb thinks that Muslim ire is unlikely to make a big difference. Most media scribes admit that Blair has no problem from the elder generation of Muslims. The antiwar lobby is in the hands of the younger set.

Since the economy has done well and Blair is harping on it, the Christian Science Monitor pointed out a new threat to him from the collapse of one of Britain’s biggest and prestigious car-making units, MG Rover. The company filed for bankruptcy two weeks ago after a takeover bid from a Chinese carmaker failed. Mark Rice-Oxley of the Monitor writes from London that "In political terms, it’s as if General Motors went bust less than a month before a US presidential election. As many as 6,000 workers at the Longbridge plant in Central England face imminent lay-offs. And many more jobs in related industries are on the line. Locals say an entire region that would normally support Mr. Blair’s Labour Party on May 5 election is now in shock."

A Wahington Post report by Madeline Chambers also refers to the collapse of the MG Rover and says, "The timing could hardly be worse for Labour which hopes its economic record, including low unemployment, will outweigh negative election factors such as the unpopular Iraq war. At least a million British manufacturing jobs have been lost under Labour in the last eight years and those facing redundancy may not appreciate some of Labour`s advertisements But analysts say opposition parties may fail to make gains."

The Monitor also highlights the absence of Iraq in the election debates and more importantly the war on terror and moral issues like abortion and gay rights that figured so prominently in the US election debate. John Curtice, a professor at the University of Strathclyde says,  "the government is not talking about Iraq because it knows it is not popular." But Dr David Baker of Warwick University says that elections are seldom decided on foreign affairs.

John O’Sullivan writing in the National Review drops a bomb.  "Today, however, an economic concussion grenade landed in the middle of the Labour campaign disorienting everyone. A report from the International Monetary Fund predicted that the economy would expand by a slow 2.6 percent compared with Brown’s targeted figure of 3.4 per cent. Public finances were thus, it argued, spiralling dangerously out of control. The chancellor would have either to slash spending or to raise taxes. The economic and budgetary assessment was bad enough. What made it worse was that it came from the IMF. Again, no American can really appreciate the tribal memories that an IMF intervention stirs up in Britain."

Los Angeles Times alone referred to the surprisingly short period within which the entire electoral process has to be wrapped up. In an Op-Ed article, Patt Morrison, "So Blair rolls out of the palace gates and, just like that, an election is on - for May 5. A nationwide election for Britain’s top job - called, conducted and counted - all in a month’s time. You will never hear another snotty word from me about British efficiency. The entire United Kingdom takes one month to decide whether to keep its incumbent leader, and the city of Los Angeles can’t manage to do the same in five." That was a reference to the mayoral election in LA.

Newsweek finds the conservatives in disarray everywhere in Britain.  "And everywhere, all the polls give Labour a comfortable or commanding lead. The third party Liberal Democrats, buoyed by their opposition to war in Iraq, is nonetheless not seen as real contenders to power. Its correspondent Stryker McGiure says "Prime Minister Blair is damaged goods. The unpopular war in Iraq, his seeming obeisance to President George W. Bush, his perceived inattention to problems at home as he pursued his global ambitions, his "Tony Knows Best" manner - a long catalogue of complaints has turned Blair into a drag on Labour’s prospects." But at the end, McGuire agrees that in two weeks, barring a political earthquake that nobody has foreseen, Labour will be returned with a sizeable majority in Parliament; Blair will be safely ensconced at 10 Downing Street, and the Conservatives will be licking their wounds, again.

 

Feedback:  dasukrishnamoorty@hotmail.com

 

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