Smash hit

AK: It’s hysterical. The slightest insensitivity is taken so completely out of place.

SR: Look at the things that are not being protested about. In Darfur you’ve got a Muslim massacre of other Muslims. Why aren’t there demonstrations about that in the Muslim world? That seems to me to be a much bigger thing than the Pope saying a 15th-century quote.

JB: What do you think of the term “Islamofascist”.

SR: I think there are fascists who use Islamic ideas, so I’ve no problem with the term.

AK: But one doesn’t want to align oneself too closely with Bush.

SR: No. “Islamophobia” is a word that I do disapprove of quite a lot because it seems to me there is no reason why you should not dislike an idea. But if you have ideas that I don’t like, it’s perfectly OK for me to be phobic about them. To use that as a term of criticism is very anti-intellectual. There are people who dislike my ideas who have not been afraid of being phobic about them.

JB: Can you explain why Blair has got into such trouble?

SR: It partially just has to do with the ten-year rule. For any government that has been around for a decade there is a tendency for people to get sick of it. It was the same with Thatcher.

AK: Except the atmosphere was very different. I couldn’t have been more delighted.

SR: Clearly part of it has to do with the disillusion about Iraq. But a lot of it has to do with politicians banging on and being less than they promised. I’ve never voted for anything other than Labour. What happens is a decade of disillusion. By the end, you think: “Enough already.”

AK: I also think he did make two very big political mistakes, Iraq being the most glaring. Then to declare he was going to go.

SR: History is a long time. You can’t say right now how people will think of Blair even in five years from now, ten years from now. It could be that Blair is completely justified by events, that ten years from now everybody who has been protesting against him looks pretty dumb. Or not.