The Prince of Darkness speaks

Under the title Why do the British always ditch their best Richard Perle uses the occasion of last week's turmoil in the Labour government to script a paean to Tony Blair.

It is curious that this arch-neocon should rise to defend a British Prime Minister whose policies, outside of his collusion with America in the invasion of Iraq, he undoubtedly finds reprehensible. Needless to say he doesn't touch on these at all with the exception of his praise of Blair's placing "the commanding heights of British economic power in the hands of a new class of builders and innovators" implying that this is Blair building on Thatcherism. He rightly calls Britain the "commercial center of Europe" but surely the Chancellor deserves some of the credit here (last week's events notwithstanding).

He compares Blair to Churchill and Thatcher saying "the country saved, the society transformed, the party salvaged and renewed...rewarded with a shove from the bouncers". He seems to fail the understand the different dynamics of parliamentary politics.

Churchill may have been a great leader in wartime be was indisputably not the right man for the rebuilding and reconciliation that had to follow. He was rightly ousted from office. Britain might still be paying the price today had he remained in power.

As to Mrs. Thatcher, by the time she was forced out she had become implacable, inflexible and a liability to the party. John Major and the Tory government might have survived the coup had it not been for Black Wednesday which was a direct result of Thatcherite policies.

Blair has become a liability to the party. Local officals that have to go to the electorate in May are worried about their jobs. The party need to re-energise itself.
Whether Gordon Brown is the man for the job is still open to question.

Perle support of Blair is otherwise pinned to the war in Iraq. He lauds him for ignoring "discouraging opinion polls or troublesome backbenchers" - i.e. the voice of those he is supposed to represent. He claims that Blair stood his ground with Bush citing the attempt to get a new security council resolution authorising war as an example. He conveniently ignores the fact that Blair folded and went to war anyway when the new resolution was not forthcoming.

Quite disingenuously he says that "many in the Labour party were prepared for so long to leave Saddam Hussein in place, turning a blind eye to the risks, and the barbarity, is a blight on the party's claim to stand for decency and human rights". Here he ignores the culpability of previous American administrations, including the one in which he served, in the arming of Iraq and the maintenance of Saddam in power.

At least he doesn't claim to be a historian.