"The Ghost of Gladstone Stalks the World Stage".

(Prof W R Mead sees the good side of the British empire)

"Tony Blair's global diplomacy is rooted in the 19th century, when Britain was a superpower * and India was under its rule...
Britain was one of the most fervently christian societies of its day, its foreign policy was founded on universal principles of human rights*...
So too for Tony Blair, visibly descended from this liberal tradition... humanitarian interventions for human rights and economic development based on free trade for the sake of the poor; if there are main themes in Blairs diplomacy, they are these, just as under Gladstone %...
Slavery was abolished, in Britain and its colonies in 1833. But because it still flourished in the USA,... to British policymakers of the day, this was not merely a humanitarian scandal... it also BLOCKED AFRICA FROM PEACEFUL COMMERCE [My emphasis]...
For most of the [19th century], the largest single fleet in the British navy was dedicated to to the supression of the slave trade. Ports were blockaded; suspicious ships were
stopped on the open seas...
We can hear the echo today, when Tony Blair calls (as he did in Davos) for preferential tariff concessions to poor countries. When he supports American interventions, in support of universal standards of human rights, He is following the trail that Britain blazed when it was a global superpower*...
The return to foreign- policy themes from Britains imperial past is not just nostalgia. .. Blair seems to believe that Britain can rediscover just such a role..."


*Anachronistic terms. These were not used in the 1800s.

% Gladstone, yes, but he fails to mention Henry Temple Palmerston, Foreign Secretary, and blatant consolidationist of imperial power