Both today and yesterday the Sun has carried manifestos on foreign policy, Islamic fundamentalism, and the Middle East. Yesterday’s, the Euston Manifesto, was signed by a group of self-described progressives located in America. Today’s manifesto doesn’t have a name yet, but its lone signator is an exceptional one – Tony Blair. What they two manifestos prove is that the right is not alone in seeing the need to come to grips with jihad. There may be a left wing in the U.S., and there certainly is one in Britain, but they are not monolithic, after all.

The Euston Manifesto’s framers first began collecting signatures in Britain last year. The opening lines are simple: “We are democrats and progressives.We propose here a fresh political alignment.” That alignment is one with the old classical liberalism, the sort that fought pirates on the high seas, and the sort that would make supporting the war logical as a struggle for democracy. Euston does not endorse President Bush. But one of the manifesto’s planks is especially noteworthy: “We reject without qualification the anti-Americanism now infecting so much left-liberal (and some conservative) thinking.” The authors understand that Bush bashing hurts the cause we all share. An American addendum to the manifesto was signed this week by a crowd ranging from New Republic’s Leon Wieseltier to historian Alonzo Hamby. The addendum states: “the key moral and political challenge in foreign affairs in our time stems from radical Islamism and the jihadist terrorism it has unleashed.”

The prime minister’s manifesto, published by the Foreign Policy Centre in the UK, is an eloquent version of Euston, a letter to his Labor Party peers explaining his position. Though Blair critics may want to interpret this as Blair’s last gasp, really this document is saying that his opponents are the ones who are in trouble. “The strain of, frankly, anti-American feeling in parts of European politics is madness when set against the long-term interests of the world we believe in,” Blair wrote. “We need America,” he also said. Blair’s manifesto is likely to get some press, and we can all take heart in that prospect. The cracks in the monolithic left were always there, but now they are so great that the rest of us are beginning to see them.