Columnist Tony Parsons is trying to talk Tony "Vanity" Blair out of a long-standing fascination with tighter bonding to the EU. Parsons is smart - let's hope Blair is too. Having already endured the public contempt of Old Europe, just-as-old Britain should know better by now.
Yes, winning a war breeds stupendous vanity in a Prime Minister. But if the one-sided scrap with Iraq taught us anything, it's surely that we need to break free from the European Union, not mate with it.
For all the rampant anti-Americanism in this country, there can surely be no argument that we share a bond with the United States that no country in Europe can compare to. We are tied to America by language, culture, blood, history and instinct. When I think of America, I think of Mark Twain, John F Kennedy, Muhammad Ali, Martin Scorsese, Frank Sinatra, James Stewart, Martin Luther King, Marilyn Monroe, Marvin Gaye, Sugar Ray Leonard, Robert Kennedy, Marlon Brando, Stevie Wonder, Orson Welles, and on for ever, the countless American men and women who have shaped our dreams and the way we look at the world.
You could put a loaded gun to my head and I couldn't even name you one Belgian.
The war with Iraq proved that this country has no bond with its continental neighbours. They are a bunch of oil-hungry cynics, inveterate cowards and committed peaceniks. Perhaps if we shared their sorry histories we would be more like them. But we are not.
Posted by Alan at April 21, 2003 09:05 PM