Some Poodle

My Sunday Times column on Blair:

The life of a poodle is often underrated. As dogs go, many enjoy the most pampered of existences and are smart enough to do the most intellectually demanding of tasks.

Poodle owners are often passionate about their pets, catering to their every whim, manipulated by their guile and tolerating their sometimes snippy relationships with other dogs. In many cases – and this is not restricted to poodles, of course – it’s hard to tell, after a while, who controls whom. The master routinely finds his days wrapped around catering for the poodle: walking it, grooming it, pandering to it. If the tail often wags the dog, the dog can also wag the human. And often does.

I’ve never understood, in this respect, why calling a British prime minister a poodle of the president of the United States is therefore always to the detriment of the Brit.

The rest is here.

(Photo: Stephen Hird/AFP/Getty.)