How is the government of George W. Bush less ideological than the government of Margaret Thatcher?
BB: When Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, she set out to reverse the consensus that had built up in Britain over the welfare state, over the idea of the individual having a responsibility over the community. As far as she was concerned, it was only the individual that was important. In some ways, everything that George Bush stood for and set out to do has been warped by September 11 and what has come since then. Certainly, the international image of the United States today is a lot less positive than 10 years ago. And that really shouldn’t be, because you have been the victims of this awful terrorist attack, and I think America deserves the sympathy of the world. But unfortunately, the choices that the Bush administration has made since then have in some ways turned the things that we thought America stood for inside-out. The most obvious would be what’s happening in Guantanamo Bay. AVC: Britain has had terrorist activity on its shores for a long time because of the Irish Troub
