Throughout his time as British prime minister since 1997, Tony Blair has sought to reconcile full British participation in Europe with a renewed transatlantic partnership. This week sees him take over the EU presidency and next week he chairs the G8 summit at Gleneagles.Paul Gillespie
His chosen agenda of political reform in Europe, relieving African poverty and tackling global climate change has been well set up rhetorically, drawing on his formidable communication skills. He will be watched closely to see how effectively they are matched by action and implementation, which have usually lagged behind the presentational flair.
The G8 summit has attracted unusual international and popular attention because of Blair's readiness to harness its agenda to an ambitious reformist programme on trade justice, debt forgiveness and an improved flow of aid to developing countries - especially in Africa - and to court celebrity support for the endeavour.
As a result, hundreds of thousands are expected at this weekend's demonstration in Edinburgh, while tens of millions will watch the six concerts designed to raise awareness.
This is an impressive mobilisation involving new layers of people, which could well go beyond the expectations built into Blair's own politics. It becomes all the more important for him to deliver effectively.
Make Poverty History, the lobby group organising these demonstrations, started in Britain last year as a coalition of NGOs determined to use this opportunity for the country to play a leading international role. It has since linked up with groups in several other countries, including Ireland.
The platform fights for rules allowing governments in poor countries to choose their own solutions to poverty and environmental protection - which will not always be free trade policies. It calls for an end to export subsidies and agricultural protection in rich countries, and for laws to stop big business profiteering.
The movement calls for full cancellations of the unpayable debts of the world's poorest countries, promises that have not been met by the richest states. And it calls for donors to deliver at least $50 billion more in aid and to set a binding timetable for spending 0.7 per cent of national income on aid.
This programme has been linked to the United Nations' 15 Millennium Goals to relieve primary poverty, which are to be reaffirmed at a summit in September. It has also become associated with the movement spearheaded by the US development economist Jeffrey Sachs to relieve absolute poverty in Africa by providing mosquito nets, drugs to treat the HIV/Aids virus, water programmes and agricultural rehabilitation.
Their success in publicising such demands with the help of Bono and Bob Geldof is a tribute to persistence and advocacy - however much the effort is criticised for lending uncritical support to discredited national leaders eager to find new sources of political legitimacy. That may well be true; but the very success in mobilising more awareness and involvement creates its own momentum to see through such spinning. The net gain in terms of increased consciousness of these issues is surely undeniable. This will allow more radical prescriptions for change to gain a hearing.
A more informed reception of what is actually agreed will point out that restrictive conditions can be attached to aid, that these promises often raid existing budgets and that insistence on good governance must be balanced against necessary governmental autonomy in receiving states.
While the development agenda has attracted most public attention in these islands, climate change, macro-economic reform and co-ordination and changing transatlantic relations will feature strongly at the G8 summit and in Blair's six-month EU presidency. Making progress on them will test his political skills to the limit - and his willingness to break openly with George Bush if necessary, particularly on climate control issues.
So far the US delegation has refused to go along with the draft summit communiqué on the basic science of climate change, which says it is a "serious and long-term challenge that has the potential to affect every part of the globe. There is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring and that human activity is contributing to this warming."
The US also objects to another sentence, which reads: "But we know that we need to slow, stop and then reverse the growth in greenhouse gases to reduce our exposure to potentially serious economic, environmental and security risks."
The Guardian, which published these disputed extracts yesterday, points out that Blair faces a decision on whether to break with Bush on climate change if he refuses to accept the draft, putting the US in a minority of one on the issue. Brazilian, Indian, South African, Mexican and Chinese leaders have been invited to the summit to co-ordinate action on climate issues, partly as a gesture to US objections that the Kyoto Protocol does not discipline them along with the richest states.
Blair would be seriously embarrassed if they come in vain. Their very presence underlines the anachronistic structure and membership of the G8 as a genuine focus of world power.
The alternative would be to drop the climate clauses and seek a compromise programme of action. But this would probably not be acceptable to France and Germany, which want to highlight the disagreement with the US. Thus Blair's relations with Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder will be tested, just as they are in the EU setting. A failure to bring them along next week would not augur well for the next six months of EU politics on the budget, political reform and the constitutional treaty.
Once again Blair is presented with a choice on the orientation of British policy following his fateful decisions on Iraq which reinforced the UK's strategic relationship with the US.
The great weakness of his European policy has been the failure to campaign on the subject at home, despite his rhetorical commitment.
His behaviour at the Brussels EU summit in refusing to agree the budget and his linkage of Britain's rebate to changing the Cap, reinforced a perception of selfish national interest. If he pulls off a good summit and an effective six-month EU presidency he will make up a good deal of this lost ground - including with a Bush administration which needs European allies.