Sizing up Gordon Browns take on America

last updated 8 January 2015

Britain

What does Gordon Brown really think of the U.S.? asked the London Independent in an editorial. The new British prime minister has long been described as pro-American. He vacations in the States and counts Americans among his closest friends. Yet in his first few weeks in office, his ministers have been spouting nothing but criticism of American policy. Lord Malloch-Brown, Brown’s choice for a Foreign Office post, told an interviewer that it was “very unlikely” that Brown would be as friendly as Blair was toward President Bush. Another Brown aide, Douglas Alexander, said that Britain must “form new alliances”—a shocking slap to its primary ally. Evidently the White House was perturbed enough to demand an explanation, and the prime minister was forced to move up his planned trip to the U.S. to this week, to reassure the Americans in person.

Don’t underestimate Brown, said the London Guardian. He is an able and experienced politician, in full control of his Cabinet. By having his ministers speak so candidly, Brown “established a useful sense of ambiguity, the possibility that a relationship that had been joined at the hip might eventually be severed.” When he then arrived at Camp David this week and forged a working relationship with President Bush, the Americans were relieved. Bush had taken Blair’s support for granted. Remember the G-8 summit at which Bush summoned the British prime minister with a peremptory, “Yo, Blair!” Brown, by contrast, has firmly established that the era of “sycophancy” is over.

That’s it? said Mick Hume in the London Times. Many Brits expected more. They wanted Brown to tell off Bush, just like the fictional British prime minister did in “the atrocious film Love Actually.” When the character played by Hugh Grant told the American president that Britain would no longer submit to American “bullying,” audiences across Britain cheered. That scene alone made the film a hit on this side of the Atlantic. But at Camp David, Brown did not channel Grant. Instead, he expressed gratitude to the Bush administration and talked of our two countries’ “shared destiny.” In truth, he had no choice. The alliance with the U.S. is the cornerstone of British foreign policy. Whatever Brown’s private feelings about Bush or about American policy, “don’t be fooled into thinking he could ever follow the Love Actually script on the public stage.”