- Mr. Tony Blair's genius for presentation was never more
critical than on Tuesday, when the British Prime Minister denied to an
inquisition committee of largely hostile MPs that he has anything to apologise
for, in regard to the lead-up to the Iraq war.
-
- Slamming the proposition that 'the jury is still out'
on whether former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) - he thinks their existence is beyond doubt - it was a bravura performance
by a prime minister, and it needed to be.
-
- Mr Blair, who has quietly lowered the bar on finding
the actual weapons, is on the defensive as never before. He has been hugely
embarrassed by reports that his government 'sexed up' secret intelligence
reports in an attempt to persuade a sceptical British public that the Saddam
threat was imminent, and military action the only recourse.
-
- Facing hostile questioning, Mr Blair did what he always
did in times of trouble: adopt an air of calm exasperation and 'decent-bloke'
directness. But seldom before has he had to use this approach in the face
of repeated attacks on his integrity, many of them the result of a bare-knuckle
fight with the state-funded broadcaster, the BBC, the source of the accusation
over the doctored intelligence report, now infamously known as the 'dodgy
dossier'.
-
- Not since the British general strike of 1926 has the
BBC come into such sharp conflict with a government, and the compromise
judgment reached by Tuesday's enquiry is unlikely to close the incident.
-
- So how come Mr Blair, joint leader of a righteous expedition
against a hated tyrant, has been unable to reap the usual political rewards
of military victory? United States President George W. Bush, far more deeply
involved in a highly unsatisfactory post-war condition of Iraq, has had
far less domestic political static to deal with.
-
- And how come the British leader's technically impeccable
performances in his own defence are singularly failing to capture hearts
and minds? These are questions that must be acquiring a desperate urgency
in the mind of a politician used to having things his way.
-
- Never less than smooth and articulate under stress, Mr
Blair is being presented with omen after omen that his political magic
may be fading. A rebel motion in the House of Commons against Mr Blair's
plans for hospital reform was defeated by only 35 votes, a wafer-thin margin
by the standards of a government with a built-in majority of 164, and easily
interpretable as another sign of the beginning of the end.
-
- Certainly, British political history is rife with strong
leaders who rode their luck too far. Former British prime minister Margaret
Thatcher and even World War II leader Winston Churchill presumed themselves
omnipotent, and were rejected by party and public at what they considered
to be the height of their powers.
-
- Mr Blair, who had notched up repeated successes as an
advocate of forceful and morally inspired foreign intervention, however
risky, believed that eventually the British public would allow themselves
to be persuaded on the merits of the Iraq case.
-
- Charges of being a poodle of Mr Bush did not seem to
worry him, any more than Mr Bush's strident and simplistic style embarrassed
him. Sooner or later, Mr Blair seems to have calculated, the British public
would consider its reservations about the war to have been duly noted and
would give the Prime Minister the same kind of support he had garnered
over the Kosovo intervention in 1999.
-
- It never happened, and what support he did enjoy while
British troops were in combat has faded. Those who lent their support on
the strength of the Prime Minister's word have since snatched it back again.
-
- When the history of the Blair years comes to be written,
it seems likely that the Iraq conflict and its messy aftermath will be
seen as the beginning of the end for Mr Blair's remarkably sustained political
ascendancy.
-
- The BBC spat, led by the government's combative media
chief Alastair Campbell, is widely perceived as an attempt to move the
news agenda away from the failure of the WMD search in Iraq, a case of
attack being the best defence.
-
- Whether or not that is the case, perceptions are everything
in politics, and a government so identified with cynicism and manipulation,
especially on a life-and-death matter like the decision to commit soldiers
to battle, is in serious trouble.
-
- Ultimately, however closely their political agendas may
intertwine, Britain is not the US, and its public was never going to fall
wholeheartedly in with a conflict without easily identifiable British interests
being at stake, let alone one that bent established doctrines of international
law.
-
- Quite apart from discomfort at being so out of step with
its major European Union partners, it remains a fact that an increasingly
sophisticated British electorate believes that this was a war cooked up
in the ideological laboratory of American neo-conservatism.
-
- They believe that Mr Blair's support was not primarily
based on the merits of the issue, but on his belief in the strategic benefits
of the US alliance.
-
- Many don't blame him for taking one of the unpleasant
decisions that leaders are elected (and paid) to take. But they may never
forgive the subtle footwork that has gone into presenting the decision
to go into Iraq as a black-and- white issue, when all they see are shades
of grey.
-
- Colin Donald is a freelance journalist based in Britain.
-
-
- Copyright @ 2003 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights
reserved.
-
- http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/commentary/story/0,4386,199120,00.html
-
|
