Forget Waldo. Where's Tony Blair? - New York Times
By ALAN COWELL Published: August 19, 2005
LONDON, Aug. 19 - There is nothing quite like a good thriller for summer reading and this year's page turner in Britain might be entitled "The Mystery of the Disappearing Prime Minister."
The plot so far: after weathering the July bombings and announcing a slew of antiterrorism measures, Tony Blair, Britain's prime minister, has headed out on vacation. Usually, at this time, the British press lampoons Mr. Blair for accepting freebie vacations at the homes of rich and famous people like Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy in Sardinia or Sir Cliff Richards, a singer, in Barbados.
This year, though, there is silence. Some newspapers publish photographs of Mr. Blair and his family on boats in a sunny place with palm fronds and sparkling blue waters as backdrops. But they do not say where he is - a contrast to President Bush's announcement of his five-week vacation in Crawford, Tex.
Then, the plot thickens and the Mystery of the Disappearing Prime Minister morphs into the Mystery of the Spinmeister's Letter.
About three weeks ago, it turns out - before Mr. Blair went on vacation in early August - David Hill, his director of communications, wrote to the nation's editors asking them not to divulge the prime minister's vacation whereabouts on security grounds after the July bombings, a spokeswoman at 10 Downing Street confirmed today.
The editors agreed.
"Depending on your point of view, this was an uncharacteristic display of responsibility or of sycophancy," said Andrew Sparrow, a political correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, in an interview. "Most editors would take the view that he's entitled to a bit of privacy for three weeks with his family."
Not everyone agreed, particularly since, the No. 10 spokeswoman said, there was no "specific intelligence" about a threat to Mr. Blair or his vacation spot.
"Journalists, of all people, are the last ones who should dare moralize on the acceptance of freebies," a columnist, Alice Miles, saidin The Times of London.
Messenger interupts this somewhat droll report, with the opinion that a FRICKIN' PRIME MINISTER should be held somewhat MORE accountable than some hack at a word processor. Back to what could have been a humerous yarn if written by someone who could write.
All the same, though, with London still edgy after the July attacks on subway trains and buses, she wrote, "No. 10's jitters about Mr. Blair's whereabouts are all to do with how it looks that he is sunning himself while we sweat through the threat in London, and hardly anything to do with security."
"The prime minister should accept the increased risk of this summer alongside us," she wrote, offering a tart judgment on the Spinmeister's Letter: "It is a cowardly letter, Mr. Hill, and we have been cowards not to challenge it."
Indeed, said another columnist, Stephen Glover, in The Daily Mail, "It does seem a little odd that Mr. Blair and his advisers should be preoccupied with the extra margins of his safety when, I would suggest, those left behind to travel on the London Underground are probably at far greater risk."
"Moreover, one cannot escape the thought that the risks taken by Londoners have increased as a result of the policies pursued in Iraq by the disappearing Tony Blair," Mr. Glover wrote.
Some newspapers have been tempted to test the limits of the agreement.
The Sun, publishing photographs of Mr. Blair and his wife, Cherie, said the images had been taken somewhere in the Caribbean. On Thursday, The Daily Mail published a spoof quiz entitled "Where's Blair," offering readers 10 possible venues for the prime minister's vacation, including Afghanistan and Iraq, along with more plausible places like the Caribbean. A columnist in The Sun suggested that Mr. Blair might be staying at the home of a "bachelor boy" - the title of an early Cliff Richard song.
The Press Gazette, a weekly journalists' publication, said Mr. Blair's secret had been "undermined by the fact that the foreign media have revealed the destination freely."
In London, by contrast, Madame Tussaud's contributed to the mystery, dressing its usually be-suited wax model of Mr. Blair in a vacation outfit whose influences ranged from the knotted white kerchief once favored in northern English resorts like Blackpool, to a loud shirt and garland more reminiscent of Hawaii.
Well done story? Hardly. Either approach it with full frontal comedy or make it a serious tome...middle of the road is where small animals go to be run over. VERDICT?
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