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17 octobre 2004 — Tony Blair veut rester dans l’Histoire, nul n’en doute. Voici comment cela pourrait se faire.
C’est un article d’une intensité dramatique que Peter Oborne publie le 16 octobre dans The Spectator. Il mesure la vigueur extraordinaire, la rage qui, aujourd’hui, habitent nombre de Britanniques à l’encontre de Tony Blair, dont la stature et la politique sont aujourd’hui presque entièrement caractérisées par sa soumission totale à GW Bush. Ces jours-ci, la controverse sur l'aide de Blair à GW Bush touche l'aspect dramatique des opérations militaires. Il est possible que ces relations Blair-Bush, de même que l’argument pour la guerre en Irak, relèvent presque autant de la pathologie que de l’orientation idéologique.
(Ces mêmes relations sont l’objet d’un livre, Accidental American, dont Lord Gilmour donne une critique tout aussi rageuse par son anti-blairisme si l’on peut dire, dans le Guardian du 18 septembre, avec le titre de « The caricature that came true ». Au reste, et pour ne pas être en reste, lisez ces impressions d’une Américaine juive, Carol Gould, vivant au Royaume-Uni, sur ce qu’elle perçoit de l’attitude des Britanniques à l’encontre des Américains (et des juifs, éventuellement).)
Au plus on en apprend sur l’implication de Tony Blair dans le processus irakien et dans ses relations avec GW Bush, au plus le personnage apparaît extraordinaire dans tous les extrêmes possibles. Il semble qu’avec lui, le pire soit toujours possible, et les explications les plus radicales également, — comme, par exemple, ces révélations sur son comportement face à des experts indépendants venus l’avertir, en décembre 2002, des conséquences d’une invasion de l’Irak.
L’article de Oborne est exceptionnel parce qu’il nous semble prendre date avec l’histoire. Démarrant pizzicato, terminant dans la plus grande orchestration, pour dresser l’acte d’accusation contre Tony Blair, — l’homme qui va faire réélire GW Bush, — et contre le parti travailliste, qui a raté l’opportunité de se débarrasser d’un leader complètement isolé et qui conduit une folle politique personnelle.
Ci-dessous, l’extrait de l’article de Oborne qui traite directement de ce phénomène sans précédent d’une relation entre un Premier ministre britannique et un président des Etats-Unis complètement enfoncés dans ce qui pourrait rester comme l’une des grandes folies/stupidités meurtrières de l’Histoire.
« The extent to which Tony Blair and the US President have been working together in recent months is easy to underestimate. Many things that seem mysterious only become clear when the depth and intensity of the relations between the two men are understood. Take the way the British and American governments responded to the devastating Iraq Survey Group report last week, which acquitted Saddam Hussein of possessing weapons of mass destruction, thus negating the reason for going to war. They made statements at almost exactly the same time, expressed exactly the same sentiments, in parts using almost identical language.
» As the US elections loom, the two men are determined, says one insider, ‘that their positions should not go too far apart. The White House is extremely anxious that Downing Street should not issue an apology which would embarrass the US President.’ This factor is the primary reason why Tony Blair is expending his own political capital and refusing to level with the British people over WMD. If we are to get an apology out of Blair, it will not come before the November presidential election.
» The truth is that Tony Blair has become the main international prop for George Bush as the election looms. What the Christian Right and the National Rifle Association do for George Bush inside the United States, Tony Blair does overseas. The British Prime Minister has become George Bush’s living, breathing rebuttal of John Kerry’s wounding attack that America has become an international pariah. Bush played the Blair card at the Republican convention, and in both the televised debates so far. He uses Blair shamelessly on the stump. Three weeks ago I attended a Bush rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Amid furious Republican denunciations of France and the United Nations, the President singled out Tony Blair — ‘and I was speaking to him only this morning’ — as proof that the United States can do business with the rest of the world. George Bush, in return, helps out Tony Blair as much as he can, most notably when the White House unavailingly sought to put pressure on Michael Howard’s Conservative party in the wake of the Hutton report.
» This kind of mutual support pact between two leaders is unusual, though not quite unprecedented. Indeed, Tony Blair controversially came to the assistance of Bill Clinton when he publicly endorsed the president’s character when he faced impeachment. There are increasing signs that Tony Blair is starting to irritate John Kerry. Recently Kerry denounced George Bush’s ‘coalition of the bribed and the coerced’, a contemptuous put-down of Britain and Tony Blair. It is striking that, so far as we know, there has been no contact between the Democrat candidate for president and the Labour Prime Minister.
» Tony Blair’s intense involvement with George Bush, perhaps the most right-wing US president in a century, has not merely distressed Democrats. It has caused extreme mortification among Labour MPs. Labour prides itself on being the ‘international’ party with pressing things to say about the environment, justice, fairness and much more besides. All these issues are being fought out as rarely before in the US presidential elections. And yet, with less than three weeks to voting day, Labour MPs remain almost mute, though badges marked ‘Labour for Kerry’ were furtively changing hands at the Labour conference in Brighton two weeks ago.
» For Labour MPs, the knowledge that their Prime Minister is the most potent international supporter of George Bush as he seeks re-election is not just painful. It gets worse. They know they will have their full share of responsibility if and when Bush gets re-elected. For if the Labour party moved to dislodge Tony Blair, as briefly seemed a possibility over the summer, it would send a powerful message to the United States. President Bush would lose his apologist, and the American people would learn that Bush’s policies are so unpopular that they cost Tony Blair his job.
» But Labour MPs lost their nerve. They hate themselves for it. They hate Tony Blair too. The role of the Labour party in President Bush’s re-election campaign will go down as one of the famous betrayals in the party’s history, up there with Ramsay MacDonald and the National government of the 1930s. Labour know, deep down in their hearts, that by getting rid of Blair they could have got rid of Bush. The failure to act will haunt them for ever. »
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