Changing sides on foreign policy

ANALYSIS
By Paul Reynolds
Foreign affairs correspondent, BBC News website

Tony Blair backed George Bush

It is one of the ironic features of modern British politics that the two major parties have switched roles on foreign policy over recent years.

And so it is that Labour goes into the election as a pro-European party and the Conservatives, who took Britain into Europe in the first place, are now critical and suspicious.

And it is Labour which has picked up the pro-American baton left by Mrs Thatcher and has run with it to outdistance even the American enthusiasms of the Tories.

Tony Blair and his foreign secretary Jack Straw say nice things about the American president George Bush that might make even Mrs Thatcher blush.

Half a century and more after Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt formed the "special relationship," it is a Labour government that has kept it alive.

The comings and goings indicate just how uncertain Britain really is about its place in the world.

There is no easy consensus. Perhaps there has never been. So the parties shift their positions from time to time, depending on events and personalities.

European dilemmas

Of the three main parties, only the Liberal Democrats perhaps are clear where their priorities lie - in Europe.

They have firmly rejected Labour's alliance with the United States and its support of the Iraq war.

But to understand just how things have changed, look back a few years.

Sir Edward Heath took Britain into Europe

In 1971, it was a Conservative prime minister, Edward Heath, who led Britain into the then European Community. He even tried speaking French, with fairly disastrous results.

Yet in the 1950's, an earlier Conservative prime minister Anthony Eden, who won his political spurs in a world war, had loftily dismissed Britain's future in Europe, stating that "our horizons are wider."

Ted Heath disagreed. And he was never afraid to criticise the United States either.

Government papers released in 2004 show that during the Middle East War of 1973, he was furious that President Nixon put US forces onto a higher nuclear alert without telling him. He felt that Mr Nixon might be trying to divert attention away from Watergate.

Modern Conservative policy towards Europe picks up much more from Margaret Thatche, who was constantly sceptical about the direction it was going while quite realistic about the economic benefits she felt it brought.

Labour euro-sceptics

In the heady Heath days, Labour were the euro-sceptics.

Prime Minister Harold Wilson called a referendum in 1975 on whether Britain should stay in. In between puffs on his pipe he muttered about having renegotiated the terms of entry and recommended without much enthusiasm that the UK should stay in. It did.

Relations are still tense with European leaders

As for the Americans, Harold Wilson forged a canny policy over the Vietnam War which some Labour supporters wished that Mr Blair had followed in Iraq.

He did not send troops but nor did he criticise US policy.

The public support for President Lyndon Johnson led to incessant rows within the Labour party, which was a very different animal from what it is today.

But if Britain had sent troops, even the token force Mr Johnson once asked for, the party would have rebelled.

Labour and war

Mr Blair, however, is not the first Labour prime minister to follow the Americans into war.

In 1950 Clement Attlee supported the Security Council resolution to defend South Korea , and he sent British forces to fight along the Americans.

Mr Attlee had three years earlier signed Britain onto Nato. His and Mr Blair's foreign policies stand comparisons.

And so the pendulum has swung back and forth. In one decade, Labour is anti-Europe. In the next, it is pro. And the same for the Conservatives.

It is doubtful if it will all settle down in the foreseeable future.

Britain still does not seem to want to make its mind up.

Which is why Labour wants a new EU constitution and why the Conservatives do not.

Come back in ten years and it might have changed again.