Brown will find that there's more to foreign policy than disowning Blair
From the moment that the snatched camera-phone footage of Saddam Hussein's execution emerged, it was hideously clear that the sentence had been carried out in a deplorable manner. The Americans immediately briefed that their calls for a delay had been ignored by the Iraqis. On 4 January George W. Bush felt obliged to admit that he wished that the proceedings had been 'more dignified'. Yet it took until 9 January for Tony Blair, normally a far more astute politician than the President, to speak publicly about how the manner in which the sentence was carried out was 'completely wrong'. Even then Blair was visibly irritated, giving the impression of having been forced to the lectern only by Gordon Brown's condemnation of the execution.
The delayed response was another example of one of the great puzzles of the Blair years: why has a Prime Minister who is generally so politically pitch-perfect refused to heed the Clintonian mantra of 'concede and move on', even when he is clearly in an impossible position? Take the absence of WMD in Iraq, the issue that did by far the most to diminish public trust in him. Blair delayed and delayed an apology until attitudes had hardened beyond repair. At the Labour conference in September 2004 — and only at the urging of his advisers — he delivered something resembling an act of contrition: The problem is, I can apologise for the information that turned out to be wrong, but I can't, sincerely at least, apologise for removing Saddam.' One doesn't need to be a lawyer to notice that he didn't actually apologise for either alleged offence. Blair has performed the same dance over condemning Guantanamo Bay and now the nature of Saddam's execution.
The reason Blair won't concede on these points can be found in that same non-apology apology speech to the Labour conference. The Prime Minister proclaimed that 'at the heart of this [the demand for an apology] is a belief that the basic judgment I have made since September 11, including on Iraq, is wrong, that by our actions we have made matters worse not better'. In short, Blair fears that apologies and condemnations are a sign of weakness and an admission of defeat. So he's prepared to pay a heavy political price because he believes that the alternative is a collapse in public support for the overall mission.
Blair's approach actually has the opposite effect. It leaves his supporters in the unpalatable — and increasingly untenable — position of seeming to justify the ugly scenes that accompanied Saddam's hanging, tolerating British citizens languishing in legal limbo and defending the intelligence failures that preceded the Iraq war. Blair's tactics, which might work when the press are in hot pursuit of a scandal-hit Cabinet minister, are uniquely unsuited to a struggle that will, as he rightly argues, go on for generations.
Refusing to acknowledge error actually ends up eroding public support. (Sixty per cent of the electorate now want British troops withdrawn from Iraq as soon as possible.) This is something that the smarter American hawks — led by Senator John McCain — have realised. McCain's ability to call for a surge in US troops but still criticise Saddam's bungled execution as a 'very bad thing' is why the US public still listens to him even though it doesn't like what he says. A recent poll found that only 17 per cent of Americans agreed with McCain's position on Iraq, yet an impressive 63 per cent trust his judgment on it.
The question is: does Gordon Brown's unequivocal condemnation of Saddam's hanging illustrate that Brown, a keen observer of the US scene, has realised this central truth, or was it just another example of Brown making life difficult for his nominal boss? Certainly the sight of Brown appearing in the New Year's slot normally reserved for the Prime Minister was a vivid reminder that 2007 will be Brown's year, not Blair's.
The interview made clear that Brown is happy to sound Blairite on domestic policy while distancing himself from Blair on Bush and Iraq. So we were told that the new priority is excellence, excellence, excellence in education and that Labour has 'moved on from the old comprehensive ideas'. When it came to foreign policy — where Brown has cultivated the image of being semi-detached — there was no such homage to the Blair years. Instead, he gave us the strongest hints yet of how Brown's foreign policy would differ from Blair's.
One doesn't need a degree in reading between the lines to realise to whom Brown was comparing himself when he announced that the British national interest is what he'll defend in dealing with the White House. But it would be disastrous narrowly to define the British national interest in the war on terror, for the simple reason that our enemies don't distinguish between us and the rest of the West, and didn't even before 9/11. Bin Laden's 1996 declaration of war, for instance, moves from discussing US policy to inveighing against British actions in Palestine in the 1930s. Both are viewed as part of a seamless Crusader plot to oppress the Muslim world.
Brown's other message was that he'd be 'very frank' in dealing with George W. Bush. (Again, no prizes for spotting the implicit comparison there.) Those expecting a showdown between Bush and Brown, though, are likely to be disappointed. Washington has been struck by the price that Blair has paid for being so close to the United States and the White House will understand if his successor changes the mood music from Burt Bacharach to the Arctic Monkeys.
Ironically, David Cameron has helped create even more space for Brown in the Chancellor's future dealings with the Bush administration. Cameron's distancing of the Conservatives from the United States — relatively mild though it has been — has made Washington realise that no successor to Blair will be such a public and effusive ally. Brown can therefore be more stand-offish without America starting to dream of the more pleasant alternative waiting in the wings. It also stymied the attempts of Liam Fox and others to persuade people there that Brown marks a reversion to Old Labour and its traditional antipathy to the Atlantic alliance.
There are two things that could cause substantial friction between Bush and Brown. One is if the British deserted Iraq completely and thus left the supply routes up from the south unprotected. This would be particularly difficult for Bush if it came at a time — say six to nine months from now — when his internal critics were arguing that the recently announced surge had failed and it was now time for America to cut its losses. The other is the return of Jack Straw to the Foreign Office. Straw's statements on Iran were a source of regular irritation in Washington and if he returned as the situation was nearing its critical point it would be regarded as distinctly unhelpful.
Brown will enter No. 10 largely free of the stigma of Iraq that is seen as Blair's personal project. This offers him a chance to win back some of the lost public confidence by offering an overdue admission of the mistakes that have been made. But he must be prepared to expend the capital this will earn him when necessary. Earning it may well turn out to be the easy part.
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