When Tony Blair swept into 10 Downing Street seven years ago Brits collectively wept with joy. After nearly two decades of increasingly stale, increasingly stuffy Conservative leadership, the British embraced their fresh faced 43-year old and his New Labour’s vision of “New Britain.” While on American shores Bill Clinton was mired in Monica-gate, in Britain, Tony Blair was finding time to charm the masses and, apparently, his wife, a man of the world, a man of the hearth.
But for Brits, the honeymoon ended when Blair’s shoulder to shoulder, many say poodle to lap, support of George Bush and the war in Iraq began. Paradoxically, that’s exactly why so many Americans still love him.
Guests:
T. R. Reid, London correspondent for The Washington Post from 1998 – 2002
Michael Brown, political columnist for The Independent and former Conservative MP.