It’s Great Being the President’s Poodle

Andrew Sullivan cannot understood why it’s bad to call Tony Blair a poodle of the president of the United States:

Poodle owners are often passionate about their pets, catering to their every whim, manipulated by their guile and tolerating their sometimes snippy relationships with other dogs. In many cases—and this is not restricted to poodles, of course—it’s hard to tell, after a while, who controls whom. The master routinely finds his days wrapped around catering for the poodle: walking it, grooming it, pandering to it. If the tail often wags the dog, the dog can also wag the human. And often does.

I’ve never understood, in this respect, why calling a British prime minister a poodle of the president of the United States is therefore always to the detriment of the Brit. Most postwar British prime ministers have intuitively understood this, however strongly their publics have sometimes balked. The global power of a British premier is nowhere near that of an American president, but the Brits’ leverage over such power is arguably greater than any other country’s—precisely because of their treasured, special, pampered poodle status.

Only moments ago, Mr Blair handed over the leadership of the Labour party to Gordon Brown. On Thursday, Blair will end his premiership.