Yo, Blair: the real meaning of the Tony 'n' George rap

Yo, Blair: the real meaning of the Tony 'n' George rap By Roland Watson The transcript Bush to Putin: I gotta leave by 2.15. They want me out of town so they can free up your security forces. Someone asks Bush whether he wants someone to prepare his closing remarks for the end of the G8 summit. Bush: No. Just gonna make it up. I’m not going to talk too damn long like the rest of them. Some of these guys talk too long. With the camera focused elsewhere, it is not clear to whom Bush is talking, but it is thought to have been President Hu Jintao of China. Bush: Gotta go home. Got something to do tonight. Go to the airport, get on the airplane and go home. How about you? Where are you going? Home? This is your neighbourhood. It doesn’t take you long to get home. How long does it take you to get home? Reply is inaudible Bush: Eight hours? Me too. Russia’s a big country and you’re a big country. At this point, the President seems to bring someone else into the conversation. Bush: It takes him eight hours to fly home. He turns his attention to a server. Bush: No, Diet Coke, Diet Coke. He turns back to whomever he was talking to. Bush: It takes him eight hours to fly home. Eight hours. Russia’s big and so is China. Tony Blair approaches. Bush: Yo, Blair. How are you doing? Blair: I’m just . . . Bush: You’re leaving? Blair: No, no, no not yet. Blair, standing over Bush as the President eats, tries to engage on the stalled global trade negotiations. Blair: On this trade thingy . . . Indistinct Some of the ensuing conversation is inaudible but Blair evidently wants Bush to make a statement on the talks. Blair: Are you planning to say that here or not? Bush: If you want me to. Blair: Well, it’s just that if the discussion arises . . . Bush: I just want some movement. Blair: Yeah. Bush: Yesterday we didn’t see much movement. Blair: No, no, it may be that it's not, it may be that it’s impossible. Bush: I am prepared to say it. Blair: But it’s just I think that we need to be an opposition . . . Bush: Who is introducing the trade? Blair: Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor   The Times July 22, 2006 Several public figures give their comments on the script and speakers

SPECIAL FRIENDSHIP THAT COMES IN GOLD GIFT-WRAP THE “Yo Blair” text is most surprising to me for the sweater gift. Not because George Bush accepted the woolly offering with his nicely ironic “It’s awfully thoughtful of you” (no one has ever faulted the President for his formal manners), but because Tony Blair is still giving Mr Bush gifts at all. When I was playing “flyon-the-wall” with the pair for the Times Magazine (in those happier days when the only war was in Iraq and we were winning), one of Mr Bush’s ambitions was to end the farce of exchanging gold-wrapped boxes at meetings. On the second day of the Hillsborough Castle summit in April 2003, after a morning on the “vital role” for the UN in Baghdad, the President saw Mr Blair coming towards him in the bedroom corridor, paused briefly as though he had forgotten something, dashed into a cupboard filled with cubes of diplomatic-packed foil and came out empty-handed with the words: “We’ve got to stop this gift business. I’ve got one here but I’m not going to give it to you. It’s a bowl.” Mr Blair looked pleased that the “special relationship” was too special to depend any longer on top-of-the-range porcelain. But the gifts seemed to have kept coming, along with the lightly mocking undertone in the President’s “I know you picked it out yourself”. Illusion-lovers should be grateful that we have no equivalent tapes of the gift-giving and role-seeking between Macmillan and Kennedy or Thatcher and Reagan. Both wrappings and realities have remained very much the same. SIR PETER STOTHARD BLAIR IS SUCH A POLITICAL CHAMELEON MR BLAIR is the ultimate political chameleon. He changes his tone and language depending on whom he is with. So it was no surprise that he adopted some of Mr Bush’s patois. Mr Blair believes that if only he can talk to this or that person they will be won over by his charm. As Paddy Ashdown noted in his diaries, Mr Blair “tends to say what people want to hear”. The late Roy Jenkins compared him to Franklin Roosevelt. Both had “a great ability to enthuse those who come to see them for a half an hour. They go out thinking the world is a better place and they are a more important person than they were when they went in.” But the political chameleon often leaves people confused. Just ask Gordon Brown what he thought Mr Blair promised at Granita in 1994. PETER RIDDELL JUST TWO GUYS AT EASE WITH ONE ANOTHER I HAVE dealt with Mr Bush at summits and in private he is self-deprecating and very much to-the-point, quite different to the rather anal image we know from press conferences. “Yo Blair” was the American equivalent of “Wotcha mate” and the conversation was stream-of-consciousness stuff. I do not see it in the same hysterical terms as some of my colleagues, who thought it showed master and servant. I thought it was two guys at ease with each other. Mr Blair is the only European leader with whom Bush feels comfortable. With Silvio Berlusconi or Jose Maria Aznar, they would have to speak through interpreters so could never have had this conversation. To take a European metaphor, they are addressing each other in the French tu, whereas with President Chirac or Chancellor Merkel they would use vous even in private conversation. I think people have misread informality for servility. DENIS MACSHANE Former Europe Minister