| Review of: | Yo, Blair!: Tony Blair's Disastrous Premiership by Geoffrey Wheatcroft |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Richard Briand |
| Reviewed in: | The Political Quarterly |
| Date accepted online: | 14/01/2008 |
| Published in print: | Volume 78, Issue 03, Pages 456-466 |
Book Reviews: Contra Blair
Geoffrey Wheatcroft's last book was the extremely entertaining and acute
The author also has great fun with New Labour language, noting its tendency to jargon and the unfortunate parallels between the government's terminology ('the people's') with that of totalitarian regimes. Wheatcroft also convincingly portrays the Prime Minister's ability to believe whatever he says at any particular time.
On the war itself, the author makes forensic use of the Downing Street Memo, notes the parallels with Suez, and laments the way in which the intelligence on Iraq's WMD was distorted through the removal of the accompanying caveats. Wheatcroft also tellingly juxtaposes Blair's support for Israel's attack on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 with Mrs Thatcher's refusal to support Israel's bombing of the PLO headquarters in Lebanon. So the ability to publicly differ with the US, without a rupture in relations, is not, as Blair suggested to the 2006 Labour party conference, confined to the imagination of Richard Curtis.
Elsewhere, however, Wheatcroft is less convincing. It is not, for example, true that Tony Blair always favoured Washington 'even when that contradicted his supposed desire to work more closely with Europe'. Blair's desire, in fact, for closer European defence cooperation brought him into conflict with the Clinton administration. Wheatcroft's snide description of the Prime Minister's 'escapade' in Sierra Leone also completely fails to mention how the Labour government rescued the people of Sierra Leone from limb-chopping militias.
The author's glib right-wing isolationism does not stop there. Others have (rightly) noted that one of the worst aspects of the Iraq war was how it distracted the West from reconstructing Afghanistan. Not Wheatcroft, for whom 'the right course of action was a short, sharp punitive campaign of the greatest speed and ferocity designed to collar Osama bin Laden, destroy Al Qaeda, inflict as much pain and damage on the Taliban as possible, and then get out'. Leaving, presumably, Afghanistan in the very same condition that led to the rise of the Taliban in the first place.
The author is also incorrect to argue that Bill Clinton's 'creditable ...disinclination to send American forces into action' stemmed from recognition 'that as a former draft-dodger it became him to show restraint'. Clinton's reluctance was, in fact, explained by less high-minded reasons, namely electoral ones. Wheatcroft fails to acknowledge that what he lauds (Clinton's reluctance to use US troops) led directly to what he deplores (NATO's bombing of Serbia and Kosovo).
The fact that Tony Blair eventually persuaded Clinton to publicly (re-)consider the use of ground forces undermines the author's sweeping assertion that Blair was a poor negotiator, particularly when the prospect of a ground invasion helped to persuade Milosevic to withdraw Serb forces from Kosovo.
Wheatcroft correctly notes that Blair could have followed Harold Wilson's example over Vietnam, and supported the war while failing to commit troops. Some members of the second Bush administration, such as Donald Rumsfeld, were not convinced that British troops were needed anyway. What, though, is Wheatcroft's explanation of why Blair put himself in such political danger? Merely that it gave Blair 'such a thrill' to say 'I'm there to the very end'. It does not occur to the author that the Prime Minister (however optimistically) thought that British military involvement might be a quid pro quo for progress on the Middle East road map. Nor does Wheatcroft mention that Blair's formative political experiences occurred in the 1980s, when Labour was seen as weak on defence and unable to work with Washington. Blair was, for instance, determined to avoid any repeat of Neil Kinnock's humiliating treatment by the Reagan White House in early 1987. This determination outweighed any realisation on Blair's part as to just how unpopular George W. Bush was with British public opinion.
In noting the support of Rupert Murdoch for the war, the author appears to suggest that Murdoch was doing Blair's bidding. This is back to front. Wheatcroft might have noted that, less than coincidentally, all newspapers owned by Murdoch supported the war. Again, this offers a more credible explanation for Blair's involvement in the invasion of Iraq than mere vanity. Having seen Neil Kinnock's credibility savaged by the Murdoch press, Blair was extremely wary of doing anything to alienate Murdoch, particularly when the Conservative opposition supported British involvement in the war.
There are also some minor errors: the Chancellor of Germany was Gerhard Schröder, not 'Helmut', and the SDP was formed in 1981, not 1982. He is also wrong to blame the Blair government for curtailing the right to silence. It was, in fact, curtailed by Michael Howard during the Major government.
In addition, the author's generally lucid and urbane style sometimes gives way to the sort of clunking agitprop parodied by
Much of the book is, however, reminiscent of Christopher Hitchens or Nick Cohen at their best. Many readers will, like this reviewer, find the book extremely enjoyable, even if they disagree with many of the author's arguments. If William Shawcross's