Chatham House report concludes that “The root failure (of Blair’s foreign policy) has been the inability to influence the Bush administration in any significant way despite the sacrifice — military, political and financial — that the United Kingdom has made” and that “Tony Blair has learned the hard way that loyalty in international politics counts for very little.”
Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett calls this “ridiculously wrong” but, obviously, it’s perfectly true. It’s particularly sad because, as I’ve said before, Blair was really near the top of the pyramid in terms of people whose combination of objective authority and apparent credibility were key to persuading people to back the war. Obviously, neither Blair nor Colin Powell could have actually prevented the war, were Bush sufficiently determined to launch it, but without their backing it would have been a much more politically problematic enterprise.