HOW stands the special relationship? Is the bond of brotherhood between Britain and America still strong and indissoluble? If last week's scenes in the Oval Office are any guide, the Atlantic Alliance is less robust than it has been for most of the p
ost-War period. Gordon's visit to Washington, intended to advertise his symbiotic relationship with Barack Obama, was counter-productive.
The circumstances were not auspicious. When a US president has a heavy schedule, the news that Gordie No-Mates has arrived on an autograph hunt is not calculated to enthral. Barack Obama was noted for his aloofness when he was a community organiser in Chicago, so becoming the most powerful man on earth was hardly going to make him more accessible, especially to a crawling suppliant such as Brown.
This was not statesmanship, but a very transparent bid for a photo opportunity. The extent to which the Labour propaganda operation has deteriorated was exemplified by the footage of the Prime Minister, filmed through an aircraft window, being spruced up for his big moment. There were no shots like that of Tony Blair: Alastair Campbell saw to that.
In the Oval Office, Barack Obama unmistakably betrayed ennui with his busted-flush guest; Gordon's simper signalled he wanted to have Barack's babies. Roosevelt and Churchill this was not, still less Reagan and Thatcher. What else did Brown expect, after months of scapegoating America? Last November he said on the BBC: "I mean what's happened is we've had a banking crisis which started in America; makes me incredibly angry about what happened, the irresponsibility of risk taking and the irresponsibility of not disclosing things…"
Does Brown not know they have television, video and Internet in America? Does he imagine they are unaware of what he has been saying? Obama even made a coded but waspish remark implying his recognition of Brown's two-facedness. The irony is that this is one of the few things Gordon has claimed which has a grain of truth in it: the sub-prime crisis was manufactured by the Clinton administration with its legally enforced policy of compelling lenders to give mortgages to impoverished minorities and the Democrats do not like to be reminded of that fact.
Last week Brown got the treatment he handed out to George Bush when Dubya became a lame-duck president. Before his first visit to Bush, Gordon sent Simon McDonald, his chief foreign policy adviser, ahead of him to spread consternation in Republican circles by pointedly asking what the implications would be if Britain withdrew its troops from southern Iraq. He treated Dubya like a leper because his power was oozing away.
Now Gordon is the pariah, a failure whose contagion is to be avoided. Global New Deal? Big deal! In the Obama canon there is only room for one saviour of the world, as Gordon will discover at next month's G20 meeting on which he is pinning his hopes. If David Cameron becomes prime minister, the Obama White House might appraise him as a potential partner; but Gordon is toast. "Partnership" is the new term the Obama administration has pointedly substituted for "relationship".
When Obama removed from the Oval Office the bust of Churchill that Blair had given Bush, it was a deeply significant gesture. Churchill led the government that tried to put down the Mau Mau in Kenya, in the course of which the new president's grandfather Hussein Onyango Obama was detained without trial and allegedly tortured. Imagine an Irish-American in the White House and multiply the Anglophobia by 10. The full title of Obama's book was Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.
Race and inheritance are strong motivating factors for Obama. It remains to be seen if the experience of office will eventually subordinate them to realpolitik. In the meantime, expect to see surprising heads of state and of government receiving the VIP treatment at the White House – red carpets, flags, anthems, twin podiums – that Brown was denied last week. Expect some of them to be Muslim.
In common with much of the US population, Obama does not look back to an Anglo-Saxon heritage of patrician antecedents like Roosevelt and Churchill. He looks to the non-European world, which may turn out to be a huge mistake. America may well get its fingers burned by courting unreliable allies with incompatible agendas. Then, post-Obama, Britain will probably revert to its former status. What is vital is that during the coming interlude in the special relationship we should not throw ourselves, on the rebound, into the arms of our treacherous pseudo-allies in Europe.
The full article contains 793 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
