No More Poodles? Pro-American sensibilities are ingrained enough to outlive Blair.(Cover story)

Byline: Sebastian C. Mallaby (Mallaby is a columnist for The Washington Post.)

It wasn't just jobs or taxes or even the occasional whiff of scandal that ultimately did him in. It was poodle-ism. In the end, Tony Blair became too closely identified with the foreign policy of George W. Bush. Neither the voters nor Blair's own Labour Party would stand for it.

The question now is whether Britain will distance itself decisively from its ally, leaving the United States more isolated in the war on terror. Gordon Brown, the all-but-anointed prime-minister-in-waiting, restricts himself to tepid endorsements of Bush's foreign policy and evidently feels no love for it. David Cameron, the fresh leader of the opposition Conservative Party, knows how to read the national mood. He is not going to pick up the pro-American baton. But the Anglo-American alliance will soon recover--beginning the day after Bush leaves office.

Forget those polls showing an alarming anti-Americanism in Britain. In fact, the pull of pro-Americanism is strong--and growing stronger. Remember: when first elected in 1997, Blair was expected to rebalance Britain's foreign policy away from the United States and in favor of Europe. The forces binding Britain to America prevented anything of the sort from happening. And during the late 1990s, Blair bonded with the Clinton administration even more passionately than he later bonded with Bush. His rampant pro-Americanism did not impede a landslide re-election.

Blair's serial love affairs with Washington reflect changes in British life that are certain to outlast him. In the Britain of the 1970s and 1980s, a Blairish affinity with America was almost inconceivable. Britons inhabited a country in which class resentments were intense, success was regarded as suspect and pessimism was the unofficial national religion. The only relief from the sensation of national decline came from a perfunctory military victory over a third-rate Argentine dictatorship.

That changed in the 1990s. Unemployment plummeted, the economy bloomed and Britain ...