Heartbreak in London

Connect: This week London repeatedly became the centre of the world

Connect: This week London repeatedly became the centre of the world. On Saturday it hosted one of the major Live 8 concerts, on Wednesday it won its bid for the 2012 Olympics, on Thursday parts of its public transport system - tube stations and a bus - were bombed, killing more than 50 and maiming scores of people.

The city's mood plummeted from jubilation to agony.

Tony Blair's must have too. Before the carnage he could be seen with Bob'n'Bono, he was hosting the G8 leaders in Scotland and he'd received credit for London's Olympics bid victory. He was, at least briefly, soaring politically.

Then the bombers struck. The nightmare of Iraq erupted across the city, not least in Russell Square near the British Museum.

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Mind you, the winning Olympic bid had produced curiously ominous comment.

"We have survived the fear of a political backlash from Muslim and Third World countries offended at our role as the Great Satan's little helper," crowed former Conservative minister David Mellor in Wednesday's Evening Standard. His targets were, of course, Paris and France and he was typically sneering.

"Two hundred years ago the Battle of Trafalgar and today the Battle of Singapore. Not so many dead - that's progress for you - but the sting of defeat will hit the French just as hard," taunted Mellor. "And it couldn't happen to nicer people, could it? I know it's wrong to gloat, but I'm gloating like mad right now. Paris thought they had it in the bag," he added.

It's true that the French lost the Olympics but invoking the Battle of Trafalgar? What can Mellor and his ilk say now, after London has been bombed? Why the routine glorying in militarism? His remarks were certainly cheap. They suggested - sniggered, really - that bombing Iraq is all right so long as the unelected International Olympic Committee (IOC) doesn't object.

They were mostly, however, a dig at the French, who have not agreed, unlike George Bush's poodle Tony Blair, with Bush's "war on terror". The terrorist attacks on London were despicable and cowardly. They were directed, not at the politically or militarily powerful but at ordinary Londoners and tourists and they have shattered a rising mood. But they've been expected for some time.

Their timing, however, less than 24 hours after the jubilation of the winning Olympics bid, has been especially harsh. Indeed, the London Olympics will almost certainly now be indelibly linked with death - perhaps not quite as the Munich Olympics of 1972 are linked, but not much less. The fear now is that the slaughter in London is not over. Nobody can be sure.

Still, the city deserves congratulations for its winning Olympic bid. Since the second World War, when the East End took the brunt of Nazi bombing (3,000 dead in one night) and later with the collapse of the city's docks, east London has become one of the poorest urban areas in western Europe. The infrastructure for an Olympic Games should at least end that and provide some regeneration.

But who has been right about Iraq - Tony Blair or Jacques Chirac? Blair appears less sleazy than Chirac yet Chirac appears to have decided not just more wisely, but more morally about Iraq.

In power politics - especially at G8 level - morality seldom features as a major consideration, but to date Chirac's politics over Bush's "war on terror" have been eminently more supportable.

Britain and France have been enemies for centuries (though they've been allies when Germany has been especially strong). Likewise London and Paris, two historical European cities, are becoming dwarfed now by the monster cities developing in Asia - especially in China. The race between them and Madrid, New York and Moscow for the 2012 Olympics had a throwback feel.

Common wisdom holds that Paris is more beautiful than London and, in fairness, common wisdom is right. The irony is that London, though unlike Paris, was never really a "royal" city, still houses a monarch while Paris is the capital of a republic. London is fundamentally a commercial city. Built on trade - goods and money - it has long been a city of quite raw capitalism.

Now, following a week in which the city won back the Olympics after almost 60 years, Blair's support for Bush has arguably attracted terrorist bombers to London. It's unlikely that anybody in Ireland will change their minds over supporting or decrying Blair's actions. In London, however, how might you feel - especially if you had marched against attacking Iraq - if you lost a loved one?

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," is the opening sentence of Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. The cities in question are London and Paris.

This week, London experienced both the best and the worst of times while Paris experienced neither. So, pro-Bush Blair or anti-Bush Chirac? The man who lost the Olympics could turn out to be the winner, after all. Even though Jacques Chirac is, as they say, toast, Tony Blair is not looking much healthier after London's chaotic week. For him, a week must seem like an eternity in politics.