ABSTRACT
The Suez Crisis of 1956 was generally regarded as Britain’s biggest foreign policy mistake since Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 flight to Munich. This chapter focuses on the War on Terror risks giving the impression that the ‘normal’ routine of British foreign policy was suspended for the rest of Blair’s premiership. On 17 July 2003 Tony Blair delivered a speech to both Houses of the US Congress. He had just been awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, and he was given a rapturous reception as he acclaimed Britain and America as bearers of ‘the universal values of the human spirit’. The decision to go to war in Iraq also had a profound impact upon Britain’s position in ‘Europe’. In Blair’s first term this had been relatively strong, despite the decision to delay joining the single currency and occasional irritations over Britain’s championship of ‘light-touch’ economic regulation.
