Word: blaire
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...Brits have all but given up on our disaffected youth. Their surly demeanor and vicious behavior represent a consummate failure of the Tony Blair-Gordon Brown era. The people who once famously claimed to be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" chose instead to be even tougher on the victims of crime. Some young hooded lout threatens you or your family's safety, so you clip his ear, and an army of social workers springs to his defense, while the full might and majesty of the law are brought down upon you, with all the consequent personal...
Waiting for the President There's the rub. If he is to fulfill his ambitious agenda, Brown will have to master the one skill he has never perfected: the ability to communicate and persuade. In his defense, he can claim bad luck: he followed into office Tony Blair, at his best one of the most pitch-perfect masters of the black arts of political persuasion ever seen. But after a rocky few months, some Labour Party activists, worried about their prospects at the next election (which doesn't have to be held until 2010), openly wonder whether Brown...
...recent realignments in foreign relations have seemed substantial - France's new engagement with the U.S.; musical chairs in the Kremlin; the Shi'a revival; the defeat of Australia's long-serving Prime Minister John Howard; indeed, the departure in June last year of Blair - none of them match the seismic shift expected on Nov. 4. Despite the growing power of China and India and a resurgent Russia, the election of a new U.S. President is still the biggest event in the international political calendar...
Dark Suits, Buttoned Up Give or take the odd photo opportunity, such as a recent kickabout with French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the Arsenal soccer stadium in London, Brown's lighter side is seldom on display when he meets foreign leaders. "Tony Blair and President Sarkozy are personal friends," says an adviser to the French President. "Sarkozy's relationship with Brown is as warm and positive as it was with Blair in terms of foreign policy and European issues, but it lacks the personal friendship." Brown's joint press conference with Bush at Camp David last July was a study...
...extent, that was just what the British public wanted to see. Blair's closeness to Bush, and before that to Bill Clinton, never quite won him the influence he expected - Blair "massively overstated the importance of personal charisma and personal connections," says Katwala - and Britons became disenchanted with their then leader precisely because of this closeness and the sulfurous taint of the Anglo-American alliance on Iraq. Katwala maintains that Brown's businesslike approach to foreign leaders is in tune with the times. Denis MacShane, a former Labour Foreign Office Minister, echoes the point: "Brown wants respectful state-to-state...