British Politicians Unite Behind Blair

When word of the bombings first broke last week, Blair faced TV cameras at the G-8 summit in Scotland looking tight-lipped and shaken. His condemnation of the attacks was delivered from scribbled notes, an aide said, even before he knew the exact dimensions of the carnage. Then, around noon, he appeared again, flanked by other G-8 leaders, to read a formal statement endorsed by all of them. Each time the message was the same: resolve to identify and find the attackers; grim determination to carry on; and praise for Islam and the overwhelming majority of peaceful Muslims.

"He just seemed to capture the mood of the moment in a phrase or two," said Robert Worcester, chairman of Market & Opinion Research International, a polling group. "It's the same thing he did when Princess Diana died in 1997 and after September 11."

Blair then took off in a Chinook military helicopter for London, where his first stop was a meeting of the Cobra committee, the government's crisis management team. He then met with Howard and Kennedy to brief them on events. At 5:30 he made another televised statement to the nation before heading back to Gleneagles to resume his participation in the G-8 summit the next morning on less than four hours' sleep.

In the House of Commons on Monday, even the Rev. Ian Paisley, a longtime political antagonist from Northern Ireland, felt compelled to honor Blair's performance. "You had a hard week flying here, there and everywhere, and you also had good days but very grim days and very sad days and I think the whole country can salute you today and thank you," Paisley said.

Blair was able to count on solid support from unexpected places. London Mayor Ken Livingstone, normally an antagonist from the left, weighed in with a ringing condemnation of the attacks, which he said had nothing to do with the war in Iraq. He noted that the blows had been struck against "ordinary working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old."

He has also found support in his plea that Britain's Muslim community not be blamed for the presumed actions of a few. When the former national police commissioner, John Stevens, wrote in the News of the World newspaper on Sunday that there were 3,000 al Qaeda supporters in Britain, Blair's supporters quietly spread the word among journalists and politicians that this was unhelpful because it could stir religious tensions.

Howard's Conservatives had originally floated a trial balloon over the weekend calling for an inquiry into whether there was an intelligence failure before the attacks. But by Monday afternoon's session, he had backed away from the proposal, gently suggesting only that further study should be done after the bombers were identified and caught. Blair readily agreed.

When one vocal antiwar critic, Alex Salmond of the Scottish National Party, asked about a report that Italy, Britain and the United States were all terrorist targets because of their support for the war in Iraq, Blair responded that the attacks were "aimed at our way of life, not at any particular government or any particular policy."

No one disputed his characterization. "It was actually quite bold to put it as strongly as that," Shakespeare said. "He basically defied anyone to answer him back, and no one dared to."