Britain: The tension is palpable in London ahead of the US President's state visit this week, writes Frank Millar, London Editor
Tony Blair's message is defiant. He knows there are many out there "rubbing their hands" at the prospect of embarrassing the President of the United States and, though he doesn't say it, his own premiership.
Yet he apparently has "no hesitation" about either the timing or the importance of President Bush's UK visit this week.
"I believe passionately that there could not be a better moment for him to come to the UK than now," Mr Blair told News of the World readers yesterday.
From all past form, we can believe the British Prime Minister. In matters of domestic policy Mr Blair's record might kindly be described as patchy. On the international stage, however, he has stood like Margaret Thatcher before him, a leader of moral purpose, certainty and resolution - albeit of a variety which scares the hell out of many of his natural supporters.
So he welcomes the leader of the free world and the opportunity to reaffirm the "special relationship" over the next four days. Mr Bush and Mr Blair together will again underline "that our two countries share the same values, the same love of freedom and democracy and determination to build a safer world for our citizens and all the people of our planet". And they will answer predicted mass demonstrations against the occupation of Iraq by celebrating freedom and a right to protest denied the Iraqi people by the deposed despot Saddam Hussein.
All that said, we have no reason to disregard weekend reports that Mr Blair has told cabinet colleagues they have no choice but to grit their teeth and "tough out" what promises to be a difficult, and potentially dangerous, week for the transatlantic alliance.
Former foreign secretary Robin Cook reflects the feeling of many inside the Labour Party who find it "baffling" that Mr Blair should bestow the accolade of a full state visit on President Bush, when he never granted the same privilege to his old friend President Clinton.
Back in July last year, of course, the Prime Minister's aides could not have foreseen the circumstances in which this visit would take place. Post-September 11th, Mr Blair had received a tumultuous welcome in Washington for his solidarity with the American people at a time of unrivalled threat and suffering. And a state visit must have seemed a perfect way to cement a renewed relationship which found the two leaders standing "shoulder to shoulder" in a war against terror they would later define as the great security challenge of the 21st century.
Nobody close to Number 10 will now admit regret about the decision to extend a royal invitation to the Bush White House.
Yet the tension is palpable at the start of a week which, at best, may cause massive disruption and inconvenience for Londoners, and, at worst, appears to bring close again the threat of a terrorist attack, coupled with the prospect of street protests which could easily degenerate into violence.
Hopefully some of the newspaper headlines - about intelligence agents combing London in search of a "dirty" bomb - are over-wrought. Similarly, others - about Queen Elizabeth's irritation with requests from the President's security advisers to bolster the defences of Buckingham Palace, and rows with the Home Office over "shoot to kill" immunities for American special agents - may be over-done. Yet the accompanying White House security detail is rightly anxious about the President's safety.
And Britain's security services have reportedly placed the country on its second highest state of alert following renewed intelligence about a possible al-Qaeda attack - albeit unrelated to the President's visit.
Add to that predictions that as many as 200,000 people might seek to converge on Trafalgar Square on Thursday, and that some anarchist groups are encouraging people to "test" security around the perimeter of the palace where Mr and Mrs Bush are to stay, and it isn't hard to understand why the President's people might want to create sterile zones as he progresses around the capital.
Such is the world we live in post-September 11th, and it is a bit rich - as one commentator put it at the weekend - to find some politicians on the British left counting the cost of policing this security nightmare when the American people have paid the price in blood and money many times over in the cause of freedom in these islands and across the world.
Unfortunately for Mr Blair and Mr Bush, this mood of begrudgery feeds into a wider sense of doubt and disbelief about the issue which brings them together again this week - the war in Iraq and the justification for it. For those always opposed to the war in the first place, the president's presence - and the resultant properly heightened state of security, with whatever inconvenience it entails - will also fuel memories of the security scares which saw tanks deployed at Heathrow and prompted warnings about poison gas attacks on the London underground at a point when majority British opinion was against participation in any war without explicit UN approval.
With majority opinion apparently back where it was before the conflict, this week's visit will also bring renewed focus on the continuing search for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
It was to this shifting majority that Clare Short pitched again yesterday. She accused Mr Blair of "lying" by now stressing the need had always been to be rid of Saddam whereas he had previously said war could be averted if he disposed of the WMD. And, of course, Ms Short knows she is also tapping in to widespread personal antipathy among British voters to this president. One survey last week found half of those surveyed actually consider the Bush/Blair relationship damaging for Britain.
None of which is to suggest that Britain is in the grip of an anti-American revolution. The relationship between the British and American peoples was fired in their common experience of the fight against Nazi tyranny. And a majority of the British public instinctively shares Mr Blair's contention that it would be folly for Europe to allow anti-Americanism to define its foreign policy.
However, even his admirers can acknowledge that President Bush does not "travel" well. And there has been an ongoing failure of American as well as British diplomacy to sustain the battle for hearts and minds at home as allied forces continue to risk their lives in the cause of freedom and democracy in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.
That failure is nowhere more immediately and dangerously evident that in headline suggestions that Iraqi policy is now governed by the need for "an escape route", and a timetable for a handover of power to an interim Iraqi authority, dictated by the upcoming presidential election.
In London this week Prime Minister Blair and President Bush will need to repair some of the damage of that failed diplomacy, and assure their supporters - as well as their enemies - that neither intends to cut and run, and that the effort to achieve democracy and reconstruction in Iraq will not now be allowed to fail. Irreconcilable anti-Americans apart, even opponents of the war will surely want to stand shoulder to shoulder with them in that undertaking.