"An alliance of moderation". Good soundbite - like it a lot, means what it says. Lots of moderates. Together. Jolly good. Lets do that then. With the moderates. Getting them together. In an alliance.
Doing what?
The Blessed One's Dubai ramblings don't seem to let on. This is an ambitious foreign policy tour, and yet it seems to have no aim other than to keep the fellow busy till the P45 arrives in the summer.
We are left with little more than meaningless Blairspeak.
"We must mobilise our alliance of moderation in this region and outside it to defeat the extremists".
Naturally - but through what methods. How is extremism to be defeated, with the pen or the sword. With Israeli jets over southern Lebannon or ballot papers in Basra.
Blair has proffered little initiative or original thought. He seems to propose little more than Turkish membership of the EU, a solution to the Israel Palestine question, and an independent - democratic Iraq.
All laudable - yet highly unlikely goals.
The fact is that a foreign policy of masterly inactivity had failed the US and Britain by the time of September 11th - and it is only now that Blair and Bush realise that the neo-conservative, interventionist experiments in Iraq and Afganistan are failing too.
Its not about a change of course in Iraq. We need new principles in our foreign policy. We can no longer rely either on benign dictatorship or blind faith in 'democracy' and 'freedom'.
But I don't know what those principles are, and its quite clear that Mr Blair does not either.
