On the one hand, your judgement on the Madrid bombing was broken. On the other, I agree with you so much that it’s hard to be contrary, and I have done on anything related to the UK, and it’s been pretty accurate. I’m sure you’ve read this, too. :-)

It is not now just a matter of “a letter 52 former ambassadors and international officials have written to Tony Blair telling him he is damaging UK (and western) interests by backing George W. Bush’s misguided policies in the Middle East.” Others have started to rake over Tony Blair’s record as prime minister.

There was his early enthusiasm on becoming PM in 1997 for Britain to sign up to the Euro to be “at the heart of Europe”. Fortunately, we have so far managed to avoid becoming entangled with the flagging economic performance of the Eurozone, which has achieved higher rates of both inflation and unemployment than Britain as well as slower GDP growth since launch of the Euro in January 1999. But then in February 1998, more than a 150 German professors of economics wrote an open letter to the Financial Times urging the German government to postpone engagement in European monetary union: http://www.internetional.se/9802brdpr.htm

At Britain’s last general election in 2001, Tony Blair was committed to the reform of the public services. Not much has come of that despite a massive increase in government spending on the public services:

“Since Labour was elected in 1997, total public spending has risen almost 50% to £459 billion. But the research found the taxpayer, hit by a series of stealth taxes, had not received value for money. Much of the cash had been swallowed up by an inefficient bureaucracy and inflation-busting pay rises for civil servants.” - from:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8122-1088598,00.html

“TONY BLAIR’S pledge to improve Britain’s public services has been dealt a blow by a leaked cabinet document that shows their efficiency has collapsed since he took power. The government has pumped extra tens of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money into the NHS, schools and police forces but the confidential memo reveals that productivity in the public sector has slumped by 10% since 1997.” - from: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8122-1088597,00.html

Last week, he announced a dramatic U-turn on having a national referendum before Britain signs up to a new Constitution for the European Union after he and cabinet ministers had been telling us for many months that the proposed Constitution was just a “tidying-up” exercise so a referendum wasn’t appropriate. The relevant insight into the merits of the Constitution is this recent assessment in the Financial Times by Sam Brittan, doyen of economic columnists in Britain and brother of Leon Brittan, who was Vice-President of the European Commission 1989-93: http://www.samuelbrittan.co.uk/text183_p.html

The interesting thing is that all sorts of other people have also popped up to register their opposition to the Constitution who are not remotely connected with the usual band of suspect Eurosceptics:

“Mr Blair faces further embarrassment today when his former economics adviser says he would vote against any new EU constitution that ’remotely’ resembled the current draft. Derek Scott said: ’If the referendum is on a constitution that looks remotely like the one in December, I think that not only I but a great many British people will be voting against it.’” - from: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=515023

One especially persuasive reason for being cautious about ever closer integration in Europe is the growing cost burden on business of the seemingly unending stream of new regulatory legislation in Europe:

“Figures released today by the British Chambers of Commerce reveal that the cost to businesses of regulations introduced since 1997 has rocketed to £30bn, a rise of 46 per cent. In 2003 British business was faced with the bill for an extra £9bn.” - from: http://www.chamberonline.co.uk/cmn/viewdoc.jsp?cat=all&docid=BEP1_pressrel_0000063093

Another reason for caution is that last year, the European Court of Auditors refused to endorse the Commission’s accounts for the ninth year in succession through to 2002, which didn’t altogether surprise those who closely follow European news: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3279675.stm

Last summer, reports surfaced of large scale fraud in connection with Eurostat, the European Commission’s statistical service, lack of diligence on the part of OLAF, the Commission’s anti-fraud office, and of insider trading based on prior knowledge of grain prices posted for the Common Agricultural Policy. Readers here may recall that in March 1999, all the Commissioners resigned following an adverse report by an expert panel into fraud, nepotism and maladministration in the Commission.

On his record as prime minister, Tony Blair appears to have a remarkable talent for making deeply flawed political judgements on major issues.

“your judgement on the Madrid bombing was broken”

Yeah, but only for 24 hours, and I did correct. This I think is a virtue :). I wish others could do likewise. It was a mindset problem. Ironically it was a case of being mislead by being near to the problem. I was so expecting something from Eta, it seemed so inevitable. Then it took time for the magnitude of the thing to sink in. Bit like 09/11 in reverse.

Also some would say my euro posting was a bit up the spout, but this one isn’t over yet. Not by a long way.

“I agree with you so much that it’s hard to be contrary”

The worst part is that it’s like we are watching an enormous tragedy playing itself out, and we seem powerless to do anything.

Going on like this is madness, and pulling the troops out would be too.

I’ve been calling it the Humpty Dumpty effect all along. I think that it is possible that Bush has screwed things up badly enough that it will be impossible to fix them. All there is left is damage control and palliative medicine. But this fact is already being used against Kerry: “So what would you do to fix things, smarty-pants?” And we can expect PNAC people to say that things are bad enough that we have no choice but to take even bolder measures.

Can’t “cut and run”, you see, which was the brandname immediately given to all choices other than “stay the course”. (I almost wrote “coarse”, which describes the only sorts of discriminations of which the American polity is capable).

It’s quite possible that Kerry, sickened by what he sees and crippled by the ingrained cautiousness of Democrats, will NOT be able to propose any intelligible alternative to Bush’s policy. In which case Bush will step forward and win with a new, different, BOLD policy (Bush’s brandname: “bold”). Negativism is not good electoral politics (cf. Herman Melville: The Confidence Man) and the Bush people are unabashed.

“He’s stinking up the place -- get him out of there before he screws up again, and put someone else in” is actually acompletely rational. People do it all the time with incompetent employees and athletes. The burden of proof really isn’t on the new guy at a certain point -- putting “someone else” in is good enough as long as the new guy has any credibility at all. But electoral politics doesn’t always work that way, and we’re seeing a lot of the “Don’t change horses in the middle of the stream” talk.

“Don’t change horses in the middle of the stream” talk.”

During WW2, in April 1940 when the going was tough, Britain swapped prime ministers from Neville Chamberlain to Winston Churchill and that didn’t turn out too badly. However, in fairness, Chamberlain was already a sick man and died before the year ended.

Diplomats failed to disclose their own Arab links Oops.

say no the euro!!!!!!!!!!!!!!