Airstrip One

Terrifyingly naive

Sacre Bleue. Hugo Young writes something sensible in the Guardian:

For Mr Blair is a driven intervener. He believes in that role for Britain, and defines the national interest more broadly than any leader since Gladstone. Mrs Thatcher's sense of the national interest confined it to the defence of Britain's shores and possessions. Mr Blair reaches beyond that, beyond our local continent, into the far blue yonder, anywhere the world might be made a better place by the benign intervention of a good, stable, rich and militarily capable country like Britain. Iraq is the place where this philosophy looks like next being tested.

While I don't necesarily agree with him on the Thatcher idea (how would he explain M'Lady Finchley's frankly batty pronouncements on Yugoslavia) or his ignorance of early Gladstonian anti-imperialism, he is right that this is a "terrifyingly naive" man. And he's running the country.