Tweedle dee and tweedle (you fill in the rest). . .

I have lived in the United Kingdom for fully two-thirds of Tony Blair's premiership. I am quite ambivalent about his leadership. He is the leader of the Labour party, which is historically further to the left than the US Democratic Party, but adopted the more centrist approach of Bill Clinton. He is a staunch supporter of the National Health Service (socialised medicine), although he has brought some elements of privatisation into the scheme. The one place he has totally lost me was in his 'shoulder to shoulder' kinship with America. It isn't America that he is shoulder-to-shoulder with, at all. It is George Bush. The majority of Americans and the overwhelming majority of Brits oppose the continuing fiasco in Iraq. His 'hand-on-his heart' belief that he did what he thought was right, isn't all that soothing. As British Prime Minister, unlike a US president, he is supposed to do what the people think is right -this is a parliamentary system. Tony Blair is often accused of being 'too presidential'. Anyway, he does do well rhetorically, and we could have done worse -as the photo above suggests.