America’s worst former president, the wrinkled poster boy for BDS, sticks his peanut into Britain’s business and says Tony Blair is subservient to George W. Bush. (Hat tip: WriterMom.)

Former United States President Jimmy Carter has criticised the British Government’s “subservient” attitude towards the White House. Mr Carter told BBC’s Newsnight he believed Tony Blair was a good man, but that he could have used his influence more wisely.

The 81-year-old said: “There had once been a very strong voice from London in the shaping of a common policy. I have been really disappointed in the apparent subservience of the British government’s policies related to many of the serious mistakes that have originated in Washington.”

Mr Carter, an opponent of the war in Iraq, continued: “No matter what kind of radical or ill-advised policy was proposed from the White House, it seems to me that almost automatically the Government of Great Britain would adopt the same policy without exerting its influence. This was the case in the Middle East peace process, in the case of the Lebanese/Israeli war in the recent past and certainly in the ill-advised abandonment of the war against terrorism to substitute the war in Iraq.”

Asked if he thought Britain was exerting its influence behind the scenes, he replied he had seen no evidence of that.

“I haven’t seen the corrective effect of British disagreement with what the White House has proposed. It may be there, it hasn’t been evident to the public,” he said.