London

AMONG THE BIG LOSERS in Spain's election was Tony Blair, who lost his most important ally in Europe. With José María Aznar now headed to the world of think tanks and corporate boardrooms, Blair stands almost alone as a European leader willing to expend blood and treasure to establish Iraq as a democratic and peaceful model for a 21st-century Middle East. True, Italy's Silvio Berlusconi remains with Blair, but he lacks Aznar's gravitas and international standing. Blair also expects plucky little Poland--to borrow a title once conferred on Belgium--to stand firm (despite the recent wavering by its prime minister), as will the Danes and, most likely but not certainly, the Dutch. But none of these countries or its leaders carries the weight in Europe's opinion-forming circles that Aznar did.

"You have to look awfully hard to find a silver lining in this cloud," a top official at No. 10 Downing Street told me, as he contemplated the consequences of the Spanish electorate's decision to put in place a government pledged to pull that nation's troops out of Iraq. "This is an unfortunate and horrifying message to send terrorists," he added.

And to send to Blair. Spain's new leader, the Socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, used his post-election speech to call his British counterpart, and the American president, liars--"Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush must do some reflection and self-criticism. . . . You can't organize a war with lies." Bush, accustomed to being called a liar by John Kerry and his party, probably took less offense than Blair, whose annoyance was increased when a top Zapatero lieutenant called him "a complete dickhead." Still, I am told that Blair's congratulatory call was well received. Zapatero promised Spain's continued support for the British prime minister's drive to reform the sclerotic European Union economy--although it is unclear how Zapatero can do this, while at the same time restoring "magnificent relations" with France and Germany (relations with the United States are to be merely "cordial").

The media here, mostly following the BBC's leftish slant, can't help chortling that Labour leader Blair finds himself disappointed at the victory of a left-of-center government in Spain, and rooting for the defeat of a left-of-center candidate in the U.S. elections. The media also managed to use the Madrid tragedy as an excuse for more Bush-bashing. Joan Smith, a columnist with the Independent, somehow found in Prime Minister Aznar's reaction to the Madrid bombings--what Europeans are calling 3/11--a contrast with Bush's performance after 9/11. "In a televised address within hours of the murders," she writes, "Aznar was angry but controlled, in marked contrast to the stumbling performance of George Bush after the suicide bombings of 11 September 2001."

While on the subject of useful idiots...the chattering class's top columnist, Sir Simon Jenkins, managed to provide Blair's team with its only laugh of the week. In a piece prepared earlier but published in the Spectator on the day of the Madrid tragedy, Jenkins ridicules the prime minister's fears of a terrorist attack: "Anyone who respects Western civilization would not think it 'in mortal danger' from gangs of Islamic fanatics. . . . Mr. Blair . . . is roaming the world in search of dragons. . . . He craves to be a war leader. But . . . this is no war." So speak Britain's chattering classes while their prime minister wakes up every morning hoping that today is not the day when London will become a New York, or an Istanbul, or a Bali, or a Madrid, but convinced that day will certainly come.