BLAIR "BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR"IN STAR WARS

26-02-2007

So the cat's out of the bag - Tony Blair wants Britain to take an active role in America's latest Star Wars defence system. Barbara Panvel gives him a rocket.

Tony Blair has warned his party that his successor must continue with his New Labour policies.

Now comes evidence that this includes binding Britain to America's world-view - and policies which have led to increasing international insecurity, bloody aggression, a wrecked Iraq and a chaotic Afghanistan.

The Economist reports that Tony Blair has been discreetly waging a campaign since last autumn to secure a missile-interceptor site for Britain, leading the lobbying in person, apparently convinced that missile-defence technology, debunked in European circles as an expensive “Star Wars” fantasy, now works. The system is being deployed even as some parts are being invented.

Blair is understood to have involved Gordon Brown in the campaign.

Early American studies have described Britain, already used to American bases and soldiers on their soil, as an ideal site for tracking and engaging a missile in its “mid-phase”—the 20 minutes or so in the middle of a ballistic-missile flight when it is travelling through space.

Alongside his ill-founded belief that he has masterminded an improvement in the country's education, health, transport and utilities, it is said that Mr Blair thinks that hosting the interceptors will make Britain as well as America more secure.

The sting in the tail?

It has not yet been decided who would have final control over the firing of these interceptor missiles.