You probablyremember The Odd Couple, that tale of the comical, co-dependent relationship between two dysfunctional men of an uncertain age. One was a slob who didn't care much for the finer things in life and never worried about the squalor he was creating around him. The other was a fastidious, flouncing, control-freak, never short of a pretentious remark or a noble aspiration, whose mission was to sanitise the world. For Oscar and Felix, read George and Tony.
The comparison is not exact, I'll grant you. Walter Matthau's Oscar at least had the virtues of wit and articulacy. Blair, meanwhile, washes his hands of things obsessively less because of neuroses – but let's not forget those – than because his hands have been very dirty indeed. Stick with it, nevertheless. Who creates an unholy mess wherever he goes? And who is forever scurrying around in this oddest of friendships, donning his metaphorical apron, desperate to tidy things up?
Downing Street has not lately spun the line that the Blair-Bush relationship has invested Britain with unparallelled influence in Washington, largely because the claim is plainly untrue, even absurd. The 2005 explanation for Iraq (and the rest) is that our Prime Minister just cannot help himself from doing what is right. Where others see debacles, he sees historic opportunities so huge they render national self-interest irrelevant. This is a self-canonising government.
Where an attempt to depose a dictator is concerned, the claim is just about tenable, at least among those gullible enough to overlook endless lies and constantly-evolving revisions of history. What happens, however, when "what is right" and the President of the United States are diametrically opposed, when the future of the planet and an oil man are at odds, and when Britain's Prime Minister holds the ring? How much leverage does Blair truly possess?
This year, the question is pertinent as never before. In the 11 months remaining, Britain will hold the presidencies of the G8 and the European Union. Blair has declared that during 2005 he will therefore exploit a coincidence to advance the causes both of Africa and the environment. Both are noble, neglected issues. But what if George, like Oscar hurling a beautifully-prepared pasta at the wall, retorts: "And I say it's garbage"?
Clearly, Tony does not care for unpleasantness. The record shows that he has never once taken issue publicly with America's President. Where Bush goes, Blair follows, through thick – sometimes very thick – and thin. Yet how can the man from Britistan square the circle? America consumes one quarter of the world's oil and spews out a vastly disproportionate share of planetary pollution. Couldn't its leader, in recognition of services rendered, do us and the world a favour?
If he wields influence over George, Tony seems to be unaware of the fact. Giving the keynote address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, he spared the President any home truths. Instead, he praised the man who tore up the Kyoto protocols for the "consistent evolution" in US policy. Pandering more than somewhat to the American energy lobby, he even said that evidence for climate change is "still disputed", while graciously allowing that the vast majority of climate scientists "deserve to be listened to".
So which was it to be? Was the future of the planet, and our children's future, so pressing an issue as to render it a national priority for Britain as it leads the G8? Or was Tony prepared to compromise over rational panic in the hope that a sub-literate instrument of polluting capitalism might throw him a crumb? No contest, as usual.
In other words, in order to secure a global (but non-binding) environmental accord from his friend George some fine day, Blair grovelled. He ought to have said time is running out. He could have pointed out that the US has behaved, and is behaving, irresponsibly. He might have said American oil firms, as identified by Professor Bob May, president of the Royal Society, have launched "a lobby of professional sceptics" at British scientists who fear for the planet's future. Instead, the Prime Minister decided to attempt to sweet-talk Bush with ill-becoming praise.
"Ill-becoming" is relevant. First, as this column has mentioned more than once, a Prime Minister who puts the interests of a foreign power before the interests of his own country flirts with treason, in any useful sense of the word. Secondly, there is a simple fact: where the environment is concerned, Bush deserves excoriation, not simpering praise. As David King, Blair's own chief scientific adviser, recently observed, climate change is now a far bigger threat to civilisation than terrorism. Yet here is our Prime Minister pretending to believe, for the sake of Bush, that the evidence is seriously "disputed".
Here's some evidence. On Tuesday of last week a report by an international committee of academics, business people and politicians, co-chaired by the Blairite former minister Stephen Byers, suggested that we are perhaps only a decade away from the point at which global warming will become unstoppable. With contributions from the Institute for Public Policy Research, the Centre for American Progress, and the Australia Institute, the report argued that even a 2°C increase in global temperatures – almost inevitable on present trends – would cause "the risks to human societies and ecosystems (to) grow significantly".
Beyond that level of growing warmth, almost anyone's guess is good enough. Coral reefs, Antarctica, the Greenland ice sheet, a terminated Gulf Stream, planet-wide flooding: the chaos, devastation and suffering become a matter of guesswork, none of it reassuring. Meanwhile, if Blair had ever imagined that George was about to summon the cavalry, another study was emerging as the Prime Minister rose to speak in Davos. As a layman might put it: you thought things were bad? Think again.
The world's largest-ever exercise in computer modelling, employing both scientists and private individuals with spare capacity on their PCs, had reached a conclusion. According to the work of the journal Nature, Met Office software, academics, and 95,000 individuals in 150 countries, global warming could be worse than the most sanguine of previous predictions. If nothing is done, and done soon, the planet's temperature could increase, on average, by 11°C. In Britain, given our latitudes, that might mean a 20°C increase in real terms. The word, for the idiots among us, is "unsustainable".
The political realities are mostly explicable. Bush may be a twice-born and thrice-bought stooge of a President, but the fact remains that the US senate voted 95 to precisely zero against Kyoto when last given the opportunity. George can push through the occupation of Iraq; he cannot, even if he wished to, do anything that might be bad for business. Blair, equally, can luxuriate in the fact that Britain is on course to hit its modest Kyoto targets; he has neither the will nor the way to raise us from 66th (out of 146 nations) on the international Environmental Sustainability Index.
Neither man is excused by circumstance. The difference between them is that Bush can claim a mandate. His attitudes and policies were no secret to Americans when they voted him back into office last November, God preserve them. Blair, however, presents a different case: he can expend such political capital he has where the man in the White House is concerned, or he can play the fawning lickspittle. His performance at Davos was something of a clue: Tony has made up his mind.
Historians will one day explain it, though that thought is of scant comfort for anyone wading through current events. Perhaps those same historians will uncover just why it was that the Prime Minister of Great Britain felt under an obligation unsuspected by the Chancellor of Germany, or by the President of France. Perhaps the deal that placed a British Labour leader in fealty to a right-wing Republican ideologue will in time be explained in a way that makes any kind of sense.
As things stand, we have a premier who warns of a global catastrophe with one breath, and with the next "answers the challenge" by failing to say a single bad word about the man who refuses to halt the disaster, far less accept that it is happening. Odd is one word; obscene is certainly another. Prepare to sweat, if you are not sweating hard already.
