Forgive the terrible pun. Last week I was bombarded with Anglophilia, and one characteristic of British life is media headlines rife with terrible plays on words. I checked out Saturday, the latest novel by the British writer Ian McEwan, and held it close to my breast for several days, until I was forced to retire it at the end of a bus ride to a track meet in Waterville, Maine. I reached the final buoyant page of the novel and was hurtled down from a La-la land that vaguely resembled London, England.
In Saturday, the main character, Henry Perowne, meets Tony “The Tiger” Blair (alias mine) in that great microcosm of identity crises, the Tate Modern, a museum set in an old power station.Here, the PM mistakes Henry for one of the artists on display, and McEwan effortlessly captures Mr. Blair’s recognition of his error when “there passed through the Prime Minister’s features for the briefest instant a look of sudden alarm, of fleeing self-doubt.” That looks a lot like the red-faced, Dumbo-eared, ailing politician in the cartoon accompanying David Remnick’s pre-election novella of sorts in the New Yorker, in which the esteemed critic also points us to the same enthralling page of “Saturday” I just did. Great minds think alike, and we did so because McEwan’s paragraph was as expertly drawn as the pages of the New York Times’ Adam Gopnick or Remnick’s own ruminations on Blair. McEwan simply has an intimate knowledge of the Prime Minister that some Americans are trying to mimic; others probably don’t care—most of us like England, but not enough to have an interest in, or emotional response to, this Thursday’s parliamentary elections.
I may not either. Blair and I have not been on the same page for several years. In the last British election, which is part of a pre-September 11th branch of the time-space continuum, my mother and I chuckled to ourselves about our cast votes. Almost as a joke, we chose William Hague, the Conservative party leader who, most importantly, was against the Euro. Admittedly, Hague was very uncool, but I remember being inspired by his ambition to “preserve” the identity of Britain. But wait a minute. Why? What is the British identity, apart from bad health care, depressing weather, unfriendly people, and shoddy transportation? It wasn’t like Hague was going to fix these idiosyncrasies.
Britain, once an overprotective father, is now just an anemic offspring of the United States. Wouldn’t the smaller country be better off if it were more like the proximate France and Germany—the continental superpowers? Unfortunately, Britain is quite literally floating in the middle of a very cold ocean and whether the citizens like it or not, more than just the Prime Minister is gazing wistfully across to America. They may not be gazing at its President, but they do like a lot of morsels of Americana, they just don’t like to admit it. Neither do I.
Now that I live in the U.S., I get intimate glimpses of the aging Tony during hazy stopovers in the Heathrow Hilton or in rare caricatures in the U.S. media. Consequently, the problems with which the PM and Brits are plagued (Iraq, the National Health Service) have started to look a lot sweeter and more exotic to me. Isn’t the woman in Remnick’s article who pulled out her teeth with pliers because she couldn’t find an “available” N.H.S. dentist precious? Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
For historically obvious reasons, Britain has remained more tied to the U.S. in spite of stark differences between the two cultures—differences that have persisted from an era before the colonization of America. And the only firm link Britain seems to have to Europe is the underwater tunnel connecting it to France. But the British public is inclined to use the “Chunnel,” unlike the Prime Minister, who has been weaseling his way into George W. Bush’s affairs for quite some time, and lately, is acting as a stay-at-home PM practicing sympathetic expressions for people like the audacious cavity-ridden woman. Oddly enough, he’s in the same predicament as the President, who interrupted regular programming of, most importantly, The O.C. last Thursday to remind us that he still cares about domestic issues—that is, he still cares about changing domestic issues beyond recognition.
But in Blair’s case, changing the dastardly N.H.S. beyond recognition would save his hide. Unfortunately, it would also be like asking his wife to get up in front of a large audience and tell some frighteningly accurate, deprecating jokes about him the way Laura Bush did last Saturday. Mrs. Bush may have saved her (husband’s) hide by swan diving into the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner like a pro, but you could never get Cherie Blair to risk her life in the same manner—leave that up to Tony; he does enough foot-shooting for the both of them. He has not yet given up trying to catch Bush’s boat after he missed, perhaps intentionally, the boat to Europe. And now he’s heroically burning himself out in an attempt to regain favor with his ignored, anti-war citizens. Overhauling the N.H.S. is ambitious, but the public would love it if he would just try, and try he very well might if he were not so preoccupied with Iraq.
All that the British seem to want—members of Parliament once allied with Blair included—is a chance to preserve their identity, and along with it, the elements of the Labour party that they still have hope in. (“Has Blair forgotten which party he represents?” some are asking.) But whether this means settling for solidarity with the Bushified status quo or not, only Thursday will tell. What is certain is that to most, Blair is a good old friend who has let his people down. For this reason, there is hope yet for the man, and I blame that hope for my continued respect and nostalgia toward Britain, and even for he who runs it. Over here, most of us lost all hope last November; and respect, so very, very long before that.
Leave a Reply