Reply to: Jack Straw

[Joe Black]

Mmmm, Condi....

Article in the Times today comparing Condi's dress sense:



With dear old Becketts:

[stackpole]

He was one of the first to use the phrase "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime". [sound of fingers drumming on desk and tune less whistling as I think of any other "achievements"]

He always struck me as rather wet and pathetic.

Was it Straw who said that? I wonder what he meant by it?

Straw always looks dumb, as if everything goes on miles outside his intellectual grasp. I much admire Condoleza for pretending to like the useless moron.

[Fungus]

I always thought Straw looked out of his depth. Does anyone know of anything good he achieved, said, or was otherwise responsible for while in office? I cannot remember anything offhand.

He was one of the first to use the phrase "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime". [sound of fingers drumming on desk and tune less whistling as I think of any other "achievements"]

He always struck me as rather wet and pathetic.

[lilelvis2000]

So the answer is to appoint Condoleeza Rice as foreign secretary I guess. After all, cabinet posts don't have to be held by elected MPs.

How about a fax machine with a direct line from the white house.

[Gold Dalek]

So the answer is to appoint Condoleeza Rice as foreign secretary I guess. After all, cabinet posts don't have to be held by elected MPs.

Since America sets out foreign policy anyway your idea has merit... and it would get rid of the ugly **** Beckett

[Spartacus]

Looks like I wasnt alone in my unease of the sacking of Jack Straw ...

It wouldn't be the first time that the Bush administration has played an important role in persuading Tony Blair to sack his foreign secretary. It was little discussed at the time, but Robin Cook's demotion in 2001 also followed hostile representations from Washington and private expressions of doubt in Downing Street about his ability to work with a Republican administration. Again, there may have been other factors, but of those suggested at the time, none seems convincing. Last week's reshuffle helps to put the episode in a new, revealing context.

So the answer is to appoint Condoleeza Rice as foreign secretary I guess. After all, cabinet posts don't have to be held by elected MPs.

[Spartacus]

Isn't that to be expected though?

If you're a CEO, and send people out to negotiate with other companies, you would probably expect them to follow your defined policies and guidelines when negotiating a deal, and certainly not start suggesting you disagree with them or likewise try to force the CEO's hand. Doing otherwise would surely lead to a quick retirement?

Strictly speaking no, not in the British cabinet style of government. However I readily concede that has been more or less irrelevant since TB came to power and no future PM is likely to be keen to go back to the old ways.

[Joe Black]

You might very well be right, AtW. It is clear that Tony Blair sees himself as his own foreign minister and Margaret Beckett might be just the ticket in the Sino-Russo model, i.e. her master's voice, that and that alone.

Isn't that to be expected though?

If you're a CEO, and send people out to negotiate with other companies, you would probably expect them to follow your defined policies and guidelines when negotiating a deal, and certainly not start suggesting you disagree with them or likewise try to force the CEO's hand. Doing otherwise would surely lead to a quick retirement?

[Hart-floot]

Could this be the future face of British Politics, the face that launched a thousand chip shops??

More like Jabba the Hut

[Churchill]

Could this be the future face of British Politics, the face that launched a thousand chip shops??

Reminds me of "The Badger"...

Will Prescott end up working for Surallan?

[AlfredJPruffock]

Looks like I wasnt alone in my unease of the sacking of Jack Straw ...



Once again, Blair seems willing to put the wishes of the US government before those of the British people. That should be reason enough for wanting him out of office as soon as possible.




It wouldn't be the first time that the Bush administration has played an important role in persuading Tony Blair to sack his foreign secretary. It was little discussed at the time, but Robin Cook's demotion in 2001 also followed hostile representations from Washington and private expressions of doubt in Downing Street about his ability to work with a Republican administration. Again, there may have been other factors, but of those suggested at the time, none seems convincing. Last week's reshuffle helps to put the episode in a new, revealing context.


The first signs of what lay ahead came in the run-up to the 2000 presidential elections, when telegrams from the British embassy in Washington started to report an attitude of suspicion towards the Blair government on the part of those likely to fill senior positions in an incoming Bush administration. People such as Dick Cheney and Richard Perle were expressing scepticism about Labour's reliability, citing the presence at senior level of ministers who had supported nuclear disarmament and criticised US foreign policy in the cold war.

There was little reason to suppose these telegrams had made any impact until a relatively small incident at Labour's annual conference. Like all cabinet ministers, Cook was commissioned to write a "pre-manifesto" paper, setting out Labour's provisional second-term agenda and illustrating how the government intended to build on its achievements.


One proposal was to appoint a special envoy to campaign for global abolition of the death penalty. Switching Britain's position to support abolitionism was one of Cook's early foreign-policy decisions, and he thought that a special envoy would be an uncontroversial, but useful, way of promoting the government's policy.

Blair had other ideas. On the day the proposal become public, Jonathan Powell and other Downing Street officials warned Cook that it was unacceptable and must never be mentioned again.

The reason?

The only one given was that a special envoy would inevitably indulge in "finger wagging" at America, one of the biggest users of capital punishment, and therefore strain diplomatic relations with Washington. Under no circumstances would the prime minister countenance this, especially under a Republican administration.

The Foreign Office could continue to support abolition of the death penalty, but not in any particularly active sense.

Cook was aware of his vulnerability, especially after the Florida chads ended up hanging in the wrong direction.

He sought to replicate the strong relationship he had enjoyed with Madeleine Albright by cultivating her successor, Colin Powell. Indeed, the two men established a relationship of mutual respect even before Bush was sworn in.

But in a foretaste of Powell's own marginalisation, this cut little ice. As Cook revealed in his diaries, the neoconservatives never dropped their hostility to him and eventually got their wish.

The treatment of Straw seems uncannily reminiscent, but the issue of Iran is of a different order of seriousness to anything Cook was grappling with five years ago.

There is a pressing need for Blair to tell Bush what Attlee had the guts to tell Truman in the Korean war: that a decision to breach the nuclear threshold would encourage proliferation and make America an outcast from the community of civilised nations. He may think it clever strategy to put pressure on Tehran by keeping all options open, but the Iranians are not the only ones who need deterring.

Once again, Blair seems willing to put the wishes of the US government before those of the British people. That should be reason enough for wanting him out of office as soon as possible.

David Clark

[AlfredJPruffock]

I thought it was because he was knobin Condoleezza Rice

One hears in the smoke filled rooms of power that shes been flashing her legs at Saddam ...

[AlfredJPruffock]

Could this be the future face of British Politics, the face that launched a thousand chip shops??

[Gold Dalek]

I thought it was because he was knobin Condoleezza Rice

[Swamp Thing]

If you thought Jack Straw was out of his depth, wait until you see Margaret Beckett in action. I can hardly begin to imagine what the Russians and Chinese will make of her.

Borsht and noodles, I expect.
Why oh why Beckett? Straw was bad enough. Beckett trying to get tough with the Iranians? It will be like being savaged by a dead sheep.