Blair Softens Britons’ Opposition to Iraq War

When Britain’s political establishment returned to work this month from its collective summer hiatus, the prospect of the nation signing on to a regime-altering war against Iraq seemed to be dim.

Washington’s bellicose rhetoric had rekindled some latent anti-American instincts in Britain. While Prime Minister Tony Blair spent August on vacation, the country’s pacifist camp took the stage, with some of the loudest protests coming from members of the ruling Labor Party.

“The government was not in the driving seat of the argument,” acknowledged Peter Mandelson, a close advisor to Blair. “The prime minister had to get back to work to put his stamp firmly on the issue.”

He has done so in fine fashion, if recent polls are to be believed.

With his customary ease in political affairs, Blair appears to have choked off the growing hostility to a war and persuaded the public to at least listen to the case for ousting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Blair’s most audacious act was to march into an antiwar den--in this case, a gathering last week of union leaders--and leave those inside politely thanking him for his views.

Whether he can maintain that momentum following Hussein’s offer Monday to readmit weapons inspectors to Iraq is another question.

Blair’s response Wednesday to the overture was renewed insistence that the United Nations “keep up the pressure.” But he also stopped short of dismissing the usefulness of inspections.

That is still not enough for many of the more left-wing Labor backbenchers in Parliament. According to the dissenters, as many as 100 antiwar lawmakers may register their disapproval during a one-day debate on Iraq to be held Tuesday.

That will not topple a government that enjoys a cushy majority. But the racket may resonate with the many Britons who want Hussein contained but prefer to see it done under U.N. auspices rather than by Washington and London alone.

Mandelson acknowledges that the debate in Parliament will probably be a fiesta of dissent that will produce a “lot of noise.” But, he predicted, “it will change nothing in government policy.”

Blair has made it clear throughout his time in office that on major security issues, Britain’s place is at Washington’s side. Even his opponents in the Tory opposition and conservative press acknowledge that he is formidable at selling that stance when he turns his mind to it.

More evidence came this week in a poll by the respected ICM Research organization showing that opposition to a military attack on Iraq had fallen by 10 percentage points in three weeks, to 40% of respondents. Meanwhile, support for using force to remove Hussein rose by 3 percentage points to 36%, with others saying they are still open to persuasion.

The shift in numbers coincided with Blair’s reentry into the debate. Hostility to a war had been high, argues Nick Sparrow of ICM Research, “because nobody had made the case for the military option before, and people don’t go voting for war when there doesn’t seem to be a good reason.”

Those closer to Blair point out a more subtle change in strategy in order to push the numbers their way. The key, they note, was to get the public focus off President Bush and the war talk coming out of the U.S. government, and onto an issue they could sell more easily at home: Hussein’s record of chronic broken promises to the U.N.

“For someone in the Labor Party who is on board with Tony over Iraq, the biggest problem I see is George Bush’s language--that brash cowboy approach--and the general position of the U.S. right-wingers,” said Clive Soley, a lawmaker and former party chairman whose closeness to Blair stems from long, private discussions on the role of morality and religion in politics. “The British are generally more liberal than Americans, and Bush’s body language is a turnoff for people here.”

Hostility to Bush was particularly palpable early this month. It pulsed through a Sky News TV network poll in the week before the Sept. 11 anniversary, when respondents named Bush a greater threat to world peace than Hussein.

And the numbers showed Bush dragging Blair down with him. Pollsters at Market & Opinion Research International, or MORI, who have tracked public views on Blair’s handling of the war on terrorism over the past year, reported his approval rating sliding steadily downward in tandem with the president’s. Two weeks ago, for the first time, MORI found a majority of respondents disapproving of Blair’s leadership on the issue.

Characteristically, Blair responded by taking the argument to his critics.

His opening counterattack, a Sept. 9 news conference held in the north of England, showed none of the sentimentality he frequently adopts to justify Britain’s support for Washington.

Instead, he personalized Britain’s quarrel with the Iraqi leader, a tactic more closely associated with hawks in the Bush administration.

“You would think from some of the discussion [that] we were dealing with some benign liberal democracy out in Iraq,” Blair said dismissively. The Iraqi leader, he declared, fronts a brutal, dictatorial regime.

It was also necessary to remind the British public that Iraq was making a mockery of the world body, say Blair’s advisors. “It is not an issue of getting U.N. political cover,” Mandelson explained in an interview this week. “This is as much a challenge to the U.N., a matter of whether it is going to play an effective and responsible role, and whether people are ready to uphold the U.N.’s authority.”

The strategy seemed to be working, at least until Hussein’s offer on inspections. Baghdad’s concession may fall short of meeting its U.N. obligations, noted John Chipman, director of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. “But,” he said, “it will make the American and British stand-firm line a much tougher sell.”

The main difficulty lies with those in Britain who chafe at seeing their prime minister snuggling too close to Washington. Even those not hostile to Washington have taken to asking what Blair is getting in return for his support. There has been persistent carping that support for the Bush-declared war on terrorism has not produced tangible benefit for Britain.

For example, there was no exemption for British companies from Washington’s new steel tariffs. There were highly visible snubs on issues that carry particular cachet among Blair’s constituencies, such as the Kyoto treaty on climate change and the nascent International Criminal Court. And then there was a failure to persuade Bush to join a multilateral effort to fight poverty in Africa, an issue on which Blair has stuck his neck out.

“He tells us he raises those issues when he goes to Washington,” said Justin Forsyth, the policy director of Oxfam in London, who has met with Blair to lobby for increased Western aid and trade concessions for Africa. “But he certainly hasn’t had any payback from Bush for his loyalty.”

What Blair’s positioning does bring, his supporters tirelessly argue, is a chance to whisper the British view at the highest levels of the Bush administration. A U.S. official says that “what Blair gets out of all this is a ‘first among equals’ voice in the gathering action.”

But whether prestige is enough to satisfy critics at home remains uncertain in the long run. Blair “will have to carry this almost entirely by himself,” said Mandelson, who suggests that there should be “no doubt about his ability to do it.”

But others worry that Blair may get the calibration between friendship and supplication to America wrong.

“When it comes to Iraq,” said Soley, the Labor lawmaker, “Tony takes the view that since the U.S. is strong enough to do it on its own, you can either walk away frustrated, or get involved and see what influence you can bring.” But Soley said the chosen path is a high-risk strategy that could still end in tears.

“If the whole project goes terribly wrong,” he said, “Tony will pay a very, very high price.”