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In quotes: Kendall Myers on US-UK relations

Telegraph | News | In quotes: Kendall Myers on US-UK relations

By Toby Harnden
Last Updated: 7:29am GMT 30/11/2006

Comments by Kendall Myers, US State Department official, at the SAIS lecture in Washington DC on 28th November 2006
# Britain's special relationship 'just a myth'
# Toby Harnden's blog: An American View of Tony Blair

On 'the myth of the special relationship':

"There never really has been a special relationship or at least not one we've noticed."

"As a State Department employee, now I will say something even worse: it has been from the very beginning very one-sided."

"The State Department and the American Embassy in London, by God they'll be pushing the special relationship till the end of time."

"The last prime minister to resist American pressure was Neville Chamberlain who was a much more brilliant figure in British diplomacy [than Winston Churchill]."

"We typically ignore them and take no notice. We say, ‘There are the Brits coming to tell us how to run our empire. Let's park them'. It is a sad business and I don't think it does them justice."

On what happens next:

"It's hard for me to believe that any British leader who follows Tony Blair will maintain the kind of relationship he has. There'll be much more of a distant relationship and certainly no more wars of choice in the future."

On Vietnam:

"Harold Wilson was a great deal more clever in my opinion than Tony Blair. He managed to fool us all on Vietnam."

"The deal was not one cent, not one Bobby, not one Johnny, nobody, not one participant in the Vietnam war. Wilson succeeded by sounding good but doing nothing… Blair got it the other way round and in the end joined in this Iraq adventure."

On Tony Blair's legacy:

"I would have to say that one of the most brilliant prime ministerships of modern times was brought a cropper by the Iraq war. He'll never recover in my opinion. It's been ruined for all time. That is tragic."

Why did Blair go into Iraq?

"You would have to say that the key fact was the British perception of the special relationship that when the Americans decide a major issue of national importance the British will not oppose. The way that Iraq developed it would have been extremely difficult for Tony Blair to have done a Harold Wilson."

"Tony Blair's a modern Gladstone. He really believes it. He may not have believed WMD – I don't know anybody knew that – he essentially believed this was in the West's interest to remove this evil dictator."

"Unfortunately, Tony Blair's background was as an actor and not an historian. If only he'd read a book on the 1920s he might have hesitated."

"I think it was probably a done deal from the beginning. It was a one-sided relationship and that one-sided relationship was entered into I think with open eyes. Tony Blair perhaps hoped that he could bring George Bush along, that he could convince him but of course George Bush has many other dimensions politically and intellectually."

What did Blair get from the Iraq war?

"I can't think of anything he got on the asset side of the ledger."

On Blair's verbal skills versus those of Bush:

"I suppose he [Blair] explained the war better than us. Whenever the two…would appear together it was always Tony Blair who sort of made sense. When Tony said it, at least the words were strung along eloquently."

On David Cameron

"He's taken some distance from the US and politically it's a shrewd, astute move."

"This one sounds right and looks good and even sounds a bit like Tony Blair, shockingly."

On Rumsfeld's March 2003 comments that British military help was not essential:

"That was sort of the giveaway. I felt a little ashamed and a certain sadness that we had treated him like that. And yet here it was – there was nothing, no payback, no sense of a reciprocity of the relationship."

On Britain's 'fundamental ambivalence' towards Europe:

"The more serious issue that confronts Britain is not the strength of the special relationship but the strength of ties to Europe."

"In a certain sense I hope they break it with us because rather personally I want to see the British more closely attached to Europe."

"Tony Blair could sound European on a good day, could occasionally pronounce French well and he wears blue jeans with the best Americans. I just think the role of Britain as a bridge between Europe and the United States is vanishing before our eyes."

"What I fear is, and what I think is, that the British will draw back from the US without moving closer to Europe. In that sense, London's bridge is falling down."

On Blair and the Labour Party:

"The Conservative party has a long and distinguished tradition of knifing its leaders in the back the moment a leader looks like a liability. Otherwise they remain absolutely loyal. While the Labour party belittles, attacks its leaders in and out of power from day one to the end as it turns out they'll never remove a leader."

"I would say that Tony Blair will become the Ramsay McDonald of the Labour party and the legacy will go on for a long time. But the difference is that the Labour party lacks the sense of the jugular. They will not remove him."

"He stood up to the Labour party and they haven't had the courage or audacity to remove him, to do what the Conservative party did when Margaret Thatcher became a liability. She had to be removed and they did it."

On the ascendancy of Scots in British politics:

"It's like Sicily taking over Italy."

When accused by an audience member of sounding negative:

"We're talking about post-Iraq and it's very difficult if one is being realistic not to sound pessimistic. This is a bad moment, let's face it. To be realistic we have not only failed to do what we wanted to do in Iraq but we have greatly strained our relationships with others."

"If you're looking at this from the moon it's Iraq, Iraq, Iraq and it does not look too pretty."

The silver lining:

"There is one quite brilliant achievement. It's Northern Ireland."

"Clinton delivered on it with Sinn Fein and I think in a way Bush is helping to deliver the Protestants."

"Northern Ireland is a success story of Britain and Anglo-American policy."

November 30, 2006 at 08:01 AM in Special Relationship | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home