Fellow Americans? What’s going on here? It’s political satire courtesy of the impersonator Rory Bremner in London’s West End. His conceit: Blair has got so close to President George W. Bush that the White House is now writing the P.M.’s speeches. As the TelePrompTer rolls, the frenetic “Blair” edits and rephrases his way through a sea of cloying, flag-waving, mom-and-apple-pie Americanisms. Then, with a dramatic pause, the last line flashes onto the screen: god bless america. He despairs–and substitutes his own finale. “God help us all.”
Europe couldn’t agree more. From Paris to Brussels to Berlin, Blair’s European partners have for the most part had it up to here with his shoulder-to-shoulder, pro-U.S.A. shtik. They’re grateful for his moderating influence on Bush, which has helped ensure that any war against Iraq will go through the United Nations. But they worry that he has become “the little dog that follows America,” as one European Union official in Brussels snidely puts it. Some fear that Blair’s confused allegiances may frustrate such cherished European projects as a common foreign policy. Others are concerned that Blair himself might be harmed. His adventures with Bush, it’s said, could dash his ambitions to place Britain (and himself) at the heart of Europe, especially as Blair contemplates calling a referendum on joining the euro. “It’s a shame,” says a Spanish EU official. “Blair is the best communicator in the EU. Now, because of his slavish pro-Americanism, he’s suspect. He’s marginalized himself.”
It’s not quite that simple, of course. For one thing, Europe itself is changing. Today’s European Union, grown from nine to 15, remains very much the child of Western Europe and the old European Community. And those who resent Blair’s closeness to Washington are mainly elites of what might be called the traditional Powers That Be–the mandarins of Brussels, Paris and, to a lesser extent, Berlin. But that axis is weakening. Come next year, a new Europe will be born, expanding into Central Europe, the Baltics and beyond. These new members will, over time, redefine what it is to be “European.” And that new Europe, among other things, will be markedly more pro-American than the old Europe was. Rather than being isolated, in other words, Blair should before long have lots of company.
Think of Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia or Lithuania. Recently liberated from Soviet domination, these “accession” states are unabashedly enamored of the country that saved them. Many still view the United States as the ultimate guarantor of their security. From their perspective, Britain’s loyalty to America seems less servile than logical. “When I travel in Eastern Europe,” says Denis MacShane, Britain’s minister for Europe, “there is far more support for the United States than is realized.” The new, greater Europe, he adds, “wants leadership and will turn to those who have a clear vision of what is good and bad in the world.” In other words, the United States and its trusty sidekick, Britain. History is on Blair’s side.
But that’s for the future. In the here and now, he definitely has a problem. There is no denying that Iraq has widened the gap between Britain and its Continental neighbors. With London siding with Washington on the U.N. Security Council, it was left to France to push for the dovish “European” wording of last week’s weapons-inspection resolution. Blair acknowledges the issue’s divisiveness. Yet whatever their differences, he said last week, “Europe and America should stand together.” If they don’t, the world will become that much more dangerous a place. “The moment people think they can play Europe and America off against each other,” said Blair, “then every bad lot in the world will be doing it, and we will be the losers.”
The wrangling over Iraq would matter less if Blair weren’t disappointing his EU partners in other ways as well. One big problem is that Blair “looks a lot less European than he used to,” says Francois Heisbourg of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. Heisbourg is referring to the extravagantly Europhilic Blair of 1997, the year his Labour Party defeated the skeptical Conservatives who’d governed Britain for nearly two decades. At the time, Blair seemed on the brink of taking Britain into the single currency, joining the 11 countries that had already signed up for Europe’s most important economic project. He seemed certain to call a referendum on giving up sterling for the euro before the next general election. When public opinion hardened against the idea, the referendum was scotched. The election came and went. Even now, pro-European Blair partisans believe there’s only a 50-50 chance of holding a referendum on the euro before the next year is out–if even then.
Such hesitations have chipped away at Blair’s ambitions to be a leader for all Europe. And he has grand designs indeed. The prime minister wants EU institutions to become more democratic; at one point, he raised the idea of establishing an EU Senate drawn directly from elected national legislatures. He would like constitutional reforms to streamline balky EU decisionmaking. He has long been eager to reform the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) that lavishes huge subsidies on farmers. Coming from a voice outside Europe’s innermost circle, however, these calls for reform sound increasingly hollow. “Europeans don’t want Blair prancing around and trying to run Europe if Britain is outside the single currency,” says Tom Bentley of Demos, a London think tank. By dawdling on the euro and behaving, as some see it, like America’s poodle, Blair has two strikes against him. That message was hammered home hard last month when French President Jacques Chirac embarrassed Blair by crafting a watered-down CAP deal with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder behind Blair’s back. “Blair’s been all but sidelined,” says one EU official in Brussels, bluntly.
That’s an overstatement, but the sentiment is telling. And the costs of Britain’s isolation are clearly high for both Europe and Blair himself. Right now, Europe has no “motor,” no personal driving force, says Christian Schmidt, a German M.P. who chairs the Bundestag’s German-British Parliamentarians’ Group. “If Blair wanted to do it, it would be easy.” Easy, that is, if he were seen as a fully European player, rather than a quasi-American one.
That said, no one suggests that Blair is entirely out of the European game. To think so would be to put Europe itself on the sidelines on the biggest issues of today. At a time when the United States is the world’s only military and economic superpower, Europe needs a clear channel to Washington. Only Britain can provide it, says Kirsty Hughes of the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels. “Europeans know that if Blair didn’t exist, they’d have to invent him.” Europe may be Britain’s future, but it’s not really its present. For now, Britain has little choice but to wait in the wings for European enlargement and world events like Iraq to take their course. It stands in isolation–but it’s a splendid isolation.
With Stefan Theil in Berlin, Tracy McNicoll in Paris, Carla Power in Brussels and Barbie Nadeau in Rome
