Friday, May 05, 2006

Small Revolution in UK

Blair's cabinet shuffle is good news.

 Outgoing foreign secretary Jack Straw has repeatedly described military action against Iran as "inconceivable." Incoming foreign secretary Margaret Becket has not. Straw was a prominent figure in the Labour party; Beckett owes  her rise entirely to Tony Blair. The prime minister is replacing a foreign secretary whose weak words impeded successfully coercive negotiations with Iran with one much more beholden to him - in other words, he is reasserting his personal leadership of the Iran matter. Which means that the British position on the matter will harden, as already have the positions of the French and German governments.

Even better news is the replacement of the ultra-PC Home Secretary Charles Clarke by former defense secretary John Reid. Clarke tried to keep social peace with an alarming series of concessions to sharia and British Islamism. Reid is a fierce secularist and a critic of communalism.

Blair's moves were prodded not just by Conservative successes in this week's local elections - they won 40% of all local council seats, their best showing since 1992 - but by the post-2002 surge in support for the British National Party, a populist white-nationalist party. The BNP's local seat count doubled from 20 to 44 (out, it should be said, of a total of 22,000). The BNP has apparently profited from the soft response of all the mainstream parties to the 7/7 terror attacks. The Reid appointment indicates that Blair has decided that he cannot afford to be out-toughed in internal security. 

05/05 11:32 AM