11/09/2004|||110002243717290671||||||

THE PM'S HIT MAN

Tony Blair's biographer, John Rentoul paints an intriguing portrait of one of the government's rising stars, the straight-talking John Reid. An ex-Communist, Reid apparently wasn't always in tune with American policy in the past:

"...His biography gives him a special authority to sell the Iraq war message to those sceptical of America's motives. In 1985, he travelled with [Neil] Kinnock through the United States to meet the Sandinista leadership in Nicaragua. Because of his Communist past, he was confined to 'airports only' by his visa, putting him in roughly the same category as Yusuf Islam - the former pop singer Cat Stevens - who was recently turned round at a US airport and sent back to Britain. 'Neil was met by two officials there and I was met by four,' Reid says.

"He argues that US policy has changed now. 'I spent many years of my life arguing bitterly against the Americans, in places like Chile, bringing down democratic regimes and putting in frankly fascist regimes. Why on earth would I not celebrate when they bring down a fascist regime and bring about a democratic regime?' Reid says: 'People say to me, 'How can you support George Bush?' My view is that if the Americans reach a decision which I have reached independently as being the right decision for this country and the Western world, I am not going to change my mind because they have reached it.'"

I like the way Reid slaps down the Lib Dems case against the war:

"He does not dwell on the case for the invasion, except to make a characteristically sharp attack on Charles Kennedy. "The question that one has to ask the Liberals is; if it was right on exactly the same legal grounds to take military action in 1998, why is it wrong now?" I am drawn into defending Kennedy. Surely Operation Desert Fox - which Kennedy's predecessor Paddy Ashdown supported - was different, because it was a limited aerial bombing campaign? He counters before I have finished the sentence: "They think it was a smaller illegality they supported, was it, because it was attacking from the air, and now it's a larger illegality?"

|||Clive|||http://clivedavis.blogspot.com/2004/11/pms-hit-man-tony-blairs-biographer.html|||11/09/2004 05:27:00 pm|||||||||

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