today

The Lebanon Star states: "Syria is not the only party to blame for the fact that it has grossly misread Washington; the Bush administration's refusal to communicate with its adversaries has done nothing to help set the record straight. For the past six years, George W. Bush and his administration have talked only indirectly to Syrian leaders. And most of this oblique communication comes in the form of stern but seemingly contradictory warnings to "support democracy" in Lebanon, but back a US crackdown on Hamas, the party that was democratically elected to office in Palestine. Talk about mixed messages. Even more baffling are the unofficial phrases of the kind that Bush uttered at a G8 lunch last year: "Syria needs to stop this shit." "
Though the Star also describes Syrian reactions to Pelosi as "reading like really bad fiction", hopefully Pelosi may be able to rectify the situation.

In a hopefully similar way, Blair has at least made some level of friendly contact with Iran and got the hostages back, whatever the overall views about the whole situation may be. As I said in an earlier blog there was created by the whole matter a sensible opportunity for face to face negotiations, and the overall approach by Blair had already led to some success, from his standpoint, in Ulster.

Perhaps Blair's general approach to such matters is more appropriate to international affairs than for dealing with internal policy. Internally in the UK he is not confronting potential enemies, but his own voters and perhaps (following the Wilson/Falkender internal problems) he has unthinkingly assumed that the Labor Party is the enemy of the UK voters. This may well be implied Tory policy, and seems to have been for years, but is unworthy of any Left-thinking (though often not Left-acting) Goverment.

IMO: Remedies to the internal UK situation will not just involve focus groups and the like, but a rethinking of Labor strategy as I repeatedly point out here.