Now we know that the Anglosphere extends to Kent

It seems that one characteristic of Andrew Sullivan's blogging since he said he was giving up blogging is increased dissing of former warblogger colleagues, which maybe now is being accompanied by cultivation of new alliances. In his Sunday Times column today, mostly a critique of the UN, there's a game of spot the odd one out invited by this passage:

If the UN is powerless before genocide and corrupt in the face of dictatorships how can it be relied on to do anything of real significance in the world? That kind of work is left to the despised leaders of the West — the George Bushes and Tony Blairs and Michael Howards.

We've no idea what Sully was thinking with that final name -- a quick way to make a generic column sound more British, or an inkling of his that the Tories actually have a chance in May, thus requiring establishment of some bona fides with them? Because it's hard to see what marks out Howard, Leader of the Opposition and Member of Parliament for Folkestone & Hythe, for special inclusion as a leader of the West. It would seem that the qualifications for receiving such an honour from Sully amount to being available on his Washington TV screen for about 5 minutes every Sunday night.