S’il n’en reste qu’un, ce sera évidemment Tony Blair

Dans The Guardian du 3 octobre, Peter Preston signale, en prenant comme point de départ un très récent article du député conservateur britannique Boris Johnson, que deux ruptures fondamentales sont en train de s’accomplir avec l’administration Bush et la politique américaniste. Il s’agit d’une rupture des conservateurs britanniques d’une part, de l’establishment (et le gouvernement) canadien d’autre part (ce dernier cas étant marqué par la rupture avec la ligne américaniste du magnat de la presse canadien Conrad Black).

Ces ruptures sont importantes dans la mesure où elles mettent très gravement en question ce qu’il reste de l’alliance anglo-saxonne transatlantique et de l’unité même du monde anglo-saxon. Dans ce tourbillon fondamental subsiste une seule exception : Tony Blair, imperturbablement pro-américaniste. Blair paraît ainsi de plus en plus comme une aberration de type phénoménologique, une survivance d’une espèce en voie d’extinction : le pro-américanisme systématique de l’establishment anglo-saxon ; il est intéressant de voir que ce dernier carré se situe du côté du parti travailliste, du côté d’hommes qui s’affichent comme des libéraux, de tendance de centre-gauche.

Quelques remarques de cet important article de Preston, qui a comme sous-titre: « Canada and the Tories have made the break, but Blair is still in thrall to the US president »…

Peter Preston

Monday October 3, 2005

The Guardian

« The member of parliament for Henley, one of modern Conservatism's stellar intellects, has reformulated his opinion of the 43rd president of the United States. Henceforth, and in brief, George Bush is simply a “cross-eyed Texan warmonger”. Any previous formulation — such as the recent extended one that also found him “unelected and inarticulate” — is hereby revoked.

» Oh come on, you say. It's only Boris Johnson, the blond bombshell from Doughty Street, blasting away in his Telegraph column. What does he count for? Three Spectator words out of place about Liverpool and Michael Howard had him for breakfast. Why get excited about another spasm of vulgar abuse? Two reasons: one slightly parochial, the other a modest mould-breaker. Boris is not some marginal Tory. He's probably the best bumbling wit who hasn't stood for leader yet. So why on earth does the party of Churchill and Macmillan and Thatcher, the party of the transatlantic alliance and super-special relationships, let him bash Bush unabashed?

» That's easy. Because Michael Howard isn't welcome at the White House. Because Ken Clarke will be even less welcome. Because any new leader who emerges from December's mists must denounce Iraq as Tony Blair's American mistake. Because (Boris again) Blair “sucks up” to this supposed ignoramus. In short, Churchill's heirs now jeer at the White House and raise two fingers to the west. They don't, if they're like Boris, love Europe or any of its works. They're deep-dyed sceptics. But they're Bush phobes as well, Republican rejectors. They've brilliantly carved out a position where they have no friends left, over the Channel or over the ocean.

(...)

» And there, writ large, is the deeper message of Boris's bombshells. Times like Bush times can move parties and nations. They've inchoately moved the Tories, and carelessly outraged America's friend in the north. They are, rightly or wrongly, redefining us — everyone except, perhaps, the Blair of Brighton last week who, for all his eloquence, seemed to find nothing new in a curiously static world where the cross-eyed man remains king. No more vulgar abuse, please: but now delineation is the name of this great, changing game. »

Mis en ligne le 5 octobre 2005 à 09H50