[A-List] UK state: Blair has a legacy after all

[Michael Keaney]

Like it or loathe it, after 10 years Blair knows exactly what he stands
for

Sitting in the Downing Street garden, I ask him what is the essence of
Blairism in foreign policy. 'Liberal interventionism'

Timothy Garton Ash
Thursday April 26, 2007
The Guardian

Tony Blair bounds into the garden of 10 Downing Street, looking as if
he's ready for another 10 years there. He says he's enjoying his last
weeks and is "busier than ever". The outgoing prime minister seems full
of energy, mental vigour and that almost compulsive passion to convince
which he shares with Nicolas Sarkozy. As he approaches the 10th
anniversary of his moving in to No 10, next Wednesday, and then the
announcement of the timetable for his retirement, he talks about his
decade of shaping British foreign policy with an ease and frankness that
was not apparent earlier in his premiership - at least, not when talking
on the record. In the old British army slang, I'd say he was demob
happy.

I ask him to list his three greatest foreign policy successes and
failures. He won't play. "I don't do the successes/failures thing ... I
leave that to you guys" - meaning, presumably, historians and
journalists. He will, however, say what he's proud of: having developed
a strategic approach to British foreign policy based on the combination
of hard and soft power, and strong alliances with both Europe and the
United States. In his time, Britain has played a significant part in
hard power actions, whether removing the Taliban, toppling Saddam, in
Kosovo or in Sierra Leone; it has done the same in soft power areas,
such as Africa and climate change; and it remains a key player on most
major issues, whether Sudan, the world trade talks, or Iran. Britain is
a country of just over 60 million people in "a relatively small
geographical space", so "it has to make its weight and influence count
through its alliances".

This is crisply articulated, but hardly original. Most prime ministers
over the last 40 years would have agreed. So what is the distinctive
feature of Blair's own approach? What is the essence of Blairism? His
answer could not be clearer: "It is liberal interventionism." Blairism
is, he elaborates, about a progressive view of the world, starting from
the reality of interdependence in an age of globalisation, and acting
according to certain values. "I'm a proud interventionist." He would not
withdraw anything he said in his 1999 Chicago speech, with its liberal
interventionist "doctrine of international community". Even if it is
true, as I suggest, that the Bush administration is rowing backwards
from its advocacy of democratisation as a central plank of its foreign
policy, he is not: "Whether they do or not, I don't."

That includes Iraq. The overwhelming majority of ordinary Iraqis want
peace and democracy, but they are being sabotaged by "external players"
- he mentions Iran and al-Qaida - plus "a minority of internal
extremists". Isn't it a nightmare for him that he'll spend the rest of
his life answering questions about Iraq? No, that seems to him perfectly
reasonable, but "when people say 'Iraq will determine everything', the
answer is: it depends what happens." So are they wrong to argue that the
situation in Iraq will determine the verdict on his foreign policy? No,
it was certainly "a major dimension" of it; but it is too soon to say
how Iraq will turn out. History will tell.

I turn to those alliances with Europe and the US. The only major foreign
policy plank in Labour's 1997 election manifesto was to "give Britain
the leadership in Europe which Britain and Europe need". Does he think
he has? "Britain has been a leader in Europe," he says, a tad
defensively, although "on the surface, British attitudes remain stolidly
Eurosceptic". A great deal of that is due to the Eurosceptic media.
Europe is the area above all "where I'm urged by even quite sensible
parts of the media to do things that I know are completely daft, and
that anyone sitting in my chair would think are completely daft".

But "I have a theory about this". His theory is that "the British people
are sensible enough to know that, even if they have a certain prejudice
about Europe, they don't expect their government necessarily to share it
or act upon it". So, for example, at the European council on June 21 and
22 (which he clearly still expects to be attending as prime minister),
he hopes to agree, with other European leaders, the terms for
negotiating a treaty, codifying those institutional changes that are
required to make an enlarged EU work. Not a constitution any more, just
a simple amending treaty. The Eurosceptic press will cry blue murder,
but this will nonetheless be "the proper decision in the true British
national interest".

Then, with a new French president, a friendly German chancellor and a
helpful European commission president, Britain can go forward with its
partners to tackle more important matters for the future of Europe. Does
he, I ask, feel a certain pang that No 10's dream constellation of
European leaders seems to be emerging just as he prepares to leave the
stage? He starts laughing before I've even finished the question, then
says, with a wry smile: "C'est la vie." I take that as a yes.

As for Britain's other pivotal alliance, what, I ask, has Britain
actually got out of its "special relationship" with Washington over the
last decade? What was in it for us? The relationship itself, is his
answer, and the influence it enables us to exert on other issues, such
as climate change, the world trade talks and the Middle East peace
process. "Time we had an independent foreign policy," is the easiest
applause-line in the world, but start distancing yourself from the US
and see how your influence will be diminished.

While he argues that Britain's relations with both Europe and the US are
stronger than they were 10 years ago, he does accept that the British
are still far from his ideal of being "comfortable" with the double
relationship. The British right are no happier about our ties with
Europe than they were in 1997, and the left are even less happy than
they were then about our ties with the US. Some parts of the media, he
adds, are now both Eurosceptic and anti-American: "Well, work that one
out ..."

Perhaps the biggest change in his 10 years at No 10 is the way the
global has overtaken the local. "Foreign policy is no longer foreign
policy." Your dilemma as a national leader is that "your country wants
you to be focused on the domestic and yet the truth is the challenges
you're facing are often global". For example, it's important for us to
take domestic action on climate change but, in truth, "the purpose of it
is to give yourself traction on international leadership". So we need
more global governance: both reform of the UN and alliances for action.
A community of democracies is a fine idea, but in practical political
terms, "you build out from the European-American alliance". As the birds
twitter around the wisteria in the Downing Street garden, I hear the
echoes of many elder-statesman lectures to come.

A lot of people across the world, and not just in the US, like what
Blair says and much of what he has done. Others, particularly on the
British left, hate it. But the one thing you cannot credibly claim, at
least in regard to foreign policy, is what Simon Jenkins suggested in
these pages yesterday: that Blairism is merely "froth and miasma". Love
it or loathe it, in foreign policy Tony Blair has stood for something -
and he can tell you exactly what it is.


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