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Confident
Koizumi outshines browbeaten Blair
By
J Sean Curtin
Are we witnessing the beginning of
the end for British Prime Minister Tony Blair? This is a
question that must have raced through the mind of
Japanese Premier Junichiro Koizumi as he hurriedly
rescued his distraught friend from the jowls of the
global media.
Freezing like a deer in the glare
of headlights, an exhausted Blair was totally thrown by
a hard-hitting question during a press conference. He
was only saved from prolonged embarrassment by the swift
action of his Japanese host, who abruptly terminated the
gathering and gently escorted the pale-faced Briton off
stage. This unusual incident may eventually be seen as a
defining moment in both men's careers, but for
strikingly different reasons.
Blair was in Japan
for a brief three-day visit that was meant to focus on
unstable North Korea, but instead an Iraq-related
controversy dogged his every step. The British leader
had left Washington a hero, but by the time he reached
Tokyo he was a zero. The cause for this lightening
transformation was the suicide of a central figure in a
bitter political battle raging between the Blair
administration and the British Broadcasting Corp.
This tempestuous backdrop rumbled under the
uneasy surface of the two leaders' joint press
conference during which it felt as if it was only
Koizumi's energy that kept a physically drained Blair on
the stage. The Japanese leader succeeded in defending
his "courageous" colleague until a British journalist
leapt up and demanded, "Have you got blood on your
hands, Prime Minister? Are you going to resign?" The
Macbeth-like comment left Blair speechless and
the painfully long silence that followed was only
extinguished by Koizumi's quick intervention. While the
Japanese media tended to overlook this incident, it
formed the top story for all the British news agencies.
The eye of this political storm revolves around
the reasons for invading Iraq, which some elements of
the British media claim were exaggerated by their own
government to make the case for war more compelling than
it actually was. A senior defense adviser, Dr David
Kelly, was the main insider source of these damaging
revelations and his suicide has greatly complicated the
already perilous political landscape. Blair is now
condemned to months of damaging battles about prewar
intelligence reports, something that will further erode
his already severely battered authority. While the ever
courteous Japanese media only fully explained these
facts after Blair had left the country, the British
press showed no such mercy.
For Blair, this
episode only adds to his mountain of political woes and
may eventually be considered as the point when he
himself momentarily acknowledged that his career was on
a terminally downward spiral. Seemingly confirming this
impression, a Daily Telegraph poll conducted immediately
after the Japan visit found 39 percent of British voters
now think that Blair should resign as opposed to 41
percent who say he should stay.
Contrastingly,
Blair's temporary lapse in Japan was a huge bonus for
Koizumi as it enabled him to display his considerable
political skill on home turf. After this performance,
his current approval rating of 55 percent is almost
certain to get a boost. This will greatly help him in
the widely anticipated November general election.
Although Koizumi himself has had a few rough
parliamentary clashes on the missing weapons of mass
destruction issue, overall the conflict has greatly
enhanced his political standing.
The greatest
irony of this entire saga is that Blair's own arguments
for going to war formed a central plank in the
justification for military action that Koizumi gave to
the Japanese people. In fact, his reliance on Blair was
so great that opposition politicians dubbed him "the
parrot". They claimed he was simply mouthing the
translated words of Tony Blair and devoid of his own
ideas. That Koizumi should flourish while Blair falters
is an amazingly bizarre twist of fate. It certainly
demonstrates that the Japanese are still great masters
at adapting the ideas of others for their own ingenious
devices.
J Sean Curtin writes a weekly
social-trends series for the Tokyo-based think-tank
Japanese
Institute of Global Communications.
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