Martin Kettle
No image available
/ 24 February 2005

A whole new Bush?

Watching and listening to Bush in Brussels this week it was impossible not to see that this is a very different politician from the one who was taped by Doug Wead as he weighed his first run for the White House in the late 1990s. ”It’s me versus the world,” the then Texas governor told Wead. ”The good news is, the world is on my side. Or more than half of it anyway.”

No image available
/ 3 September 2004

What is Bush saying?

Among the half a million demonstrators peacefully thronging the streets of Manhattan last Sunday, the verdict against George W Bush was instantly familiar to any visiting European. He’s dumb, he’s dangerous, he’s divisive — and more. In the face of such anger, it is hard not to be awed yet anxious because it was another reminder of the ways in which this is becoming an ever more divided society.

No image available
/ 14 May 2004

Blair must listen or lose

Listening to Tony Blair, you hear the same unvarying judgement of the current state of the nation. Iraq was right. Bush is okay. The security situation is going badly, but it has got to be sorted. Unless the prime minister now heeds those he despises,
he is finished.

No image available
/ 23 February 2004

Why Blair fears a Kerry win

If there is one thing that British Prime Minister Tony Blair has never underestimated, it is the importance of an American presidential election in shaping the dynamics of British domestic politics. Clinton made Labour credible, now the Democrats threaten Bush’s ally.