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LAST week, a British newspaper ran a front-page story about a remark by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama's new Secretary of State, during her confirmation hearings for the job. "The new administration will have a chance to reach out across the Atlantic to leaders in France, Germany, the United Kingdom,'' she said.
Horrors! Britain, said the paper, had been "consigned to the rear" of America's European allies - although the order might just as easily have been alphabetical, or indeed random, meaning no one was "consigned" anywhere.
Now it's true that people like Hillary choose their every word with care. Maybe it was deliberate. But what the story really reveals is the growing - and justified - British fear that the famous "special relationship" is even less special to the Americans than it was.
Here in America, it is, as always, a struggle to remember that Britain exists. The newspapers have taken precisely no notice of Ken Clarke's fascinating return to the shadow cabinet; our new bank bailout made 30 words in yesterday's Washington Post, the UK's only mention of the day. Tomorrow's inauguration will, by all accounts, contain little to jog the Americans' memories. The only senior Brit believed to be attending is actually quite junior, the higher education minister, David Lammy. There have been relatively few top-level contacts with the presidential transition team.
Gordon may well lose his race to be the first foreign leader into the Obama White House; the new administration is thought to be displeased with our initially tepid response to its request for substantially more British troops to support its "surge" in Afghanistan, though there are signs that we are now warming up on the idea.
Britain's craven behaviour in Basra, where we essentially abdicated our responsibility for the city's security, cost us respect in Washington. And the very fervour of our old attachment to the Bush White House may mean that we are more discredited with the new one.
Obama himself is the least Anglophile president for years. His only family ties with the British are when his Kenyan grandfather was mistreated by them during the Mau Mau rebellion. In his memoirs, Brits are usually portrayed in a negative light. And when Candidate Obama visited Europe, he held his big rally in Berlin (though this may reflect a desire to copy a famous Kennedy photo-op, rather than any hostility to us).
Yet most important, as always, are the simple facts of diplomacy and politics. Foreign affairs will not be Obama's top priority at a time of economic crisis; and even those foreigners he does prioritise will not include us. Far more urgent than satisfying Mr Brown's amour-propre is rebuilding America's image further east.
All this is both desirable and right, for us as well as them. One of the very saddest features of the British political class is its desperation to be loved by America. With Obama, expect deeply tragic attempts from all parties to claim "The One" as one of theirs.
But if we're repudiated, it could be a much-needed blow to our costly fantasy existence as a pocket superpower, "punching above our weight" with our three-and-a-half working attack helicopters and our 150 troops. We shouldn't go anywhere near Obama's Afghan surge; it's time to withdraw, not reinforce.
If we're repudiated, it can only bring closer the day when we play to our real strength - not our moth-eaten instruments of military power but our increasingly formidable arsenal of cultural power: the world's most popular football league, most creative performing arts and most important broadcaster. Now that really would be a change we could believe in.
Don't listen to him, Emma
GEOFF HOON, the man with a third runway to sell, has launched a horrific airstrike on one of our most beloved luvvies. “I worry about people whom I assume travel by air quite a lot and don't see the logic of their position,” said the Transport Secretary, referring to the actress Emma Thompson, who has bought land near Heathrow to try to stop the project.
Mr Hoon's complaint is a particularly fine example of the Absolutist Fallacy — the politician's pretence that the only permissible choice is between the two absolute extremes. So you must either support gigantically expanded flying, or never fly at all. So you cannot oppose exciting plans for a nuclear reactor in every home — unless you live in a yurt and knit your own clothes.
Yet Mr Hoon's greatest outrage was not this
cowardly attack. It was the fact that he described Love Actually, part of Ms Thompson's oeuvre, as a “very good film”. As they say in The Sopranos, there are some things that cannot be forgiven.
Desperate Fox goes for the geese
WASHINGTON in inaugural week holds many pleasures. The historical excitement; the crowds of celebs; the chance to skate on the frozen-solid rivers. But best and funniest of all is to watch Rupert Murdoch's ultra-Right-wing Fox News, amid the general euphoria, desperately trying to find something bad to pin on Obama. On Saturday night — I'm almost sure I'm not making this up — I watched Fox's Sean Hannity blame the Hudson air crash on liberals. (The despicable scum had put a conservation order on the river's flocks of geese.) No doubt the normal forces of political gravity will soon return. But for the moment, if ever a channel felt washed-up and graceless, it is Fox.
Reader views (8)
<i>'Blair was a temporarily useful tool to the US, in the very worst sense of the word!'
'What serious use does Obama's ambitious America have with a clapped out, bankrupt, Marxist leaning, Brown Banana Republic, apart, maybe, from his perhaps wanting to 'meet the Queen'?</i>
Aside from the utterly nonsensical 'banana republic' comment--and the even more risible comment about a 'Marxist-leaning' neo-liberalism-friendly Labour Government--I agree with Dave from Cumbria. (Besides, Mr. Obama is probably more left-wing in some respects than New Labour.)
Blair was useful in prosecuting the international 'case' for the war in Iraq. And likewise all British engagements: Britain has only ever been a useful tool by which to conduct foreign policy; I reckon it was also useful in the past to use Britain as an obstacle to European integration. But what about now, where Obama's team seems to support (strongly) closer European integration--as opposed to the Clinton and Bush administrations' leeriness over it? Where does that leave the government-in-waiting, the Tories, who are even more rabidly eurosceptic than in the past?
Britain is in a right, foreign policy mess. On the one hand Britons are laughably and needlessly terrified and/or mocking of their European neighbours, whilst doggedly pursuing a one-sided American love-fest--one that we Americans (I say this as an American living in Britain) really don't share.
It's embarrassing. Britons need to get over us.
- Rcm, London/Los Angeles, UK/US
Yanks no longer interested in having a special relationship with Britain? Great! ...Now we can save a fortune by not getting involved with America's military adventures.
- Croyboy, Croydon
MY MY, Now the Blokes are telling us how they really feel about the USA. I could point out several instances when we pulled your country out of deep trouble but you would not acknowledge it or admit that you are looking to make bad remarks for your own personal aggrandizement.
- Joe L. Ogan, Los Gatos, California, USA
The Special Relationship is, I am sure, in the minds of some politicians and few journalists, other than that it is no where. The USA and the UK share just one thing, the same language; otherwise they screw each other blind.
Who said, 'and may it continue?' Oh, that was me.
Jay Walker-Mitchell
- Jay Walker-Mitchell, Brussels, Belgium
Can you ever imagine JFK addressing Harold MacMillan "yo Mac" - it says it all about the decline in our relationship. We need to offer the same support in Afghanistan as France and Germany - it is crystal clear we can't financially afford to be a misguided world policeman any more, regardless of the sad loss of our young people in futile wars.
- Tony Gee, London
We should absolutely withdraw from Afghanistan. Our politicians don't know why we're there and aren't fit to manage a war. If Obama wants a surge then that's up to him. His alter ego Kennedy began the embroilment in Vietnam. Afghanistan looks eerily similar to me.
- Gill, Birmingham UK
Blair was a temporarily useful tool to the US, in the very worst sense of the word!
What serious use does Obama's ambitious America have with a clapped out, bankrupt, Marxist leaning, Brown Banana Republic, apart, maybe, from his perhaps wanting to 'meet the Queen'?
And another one for the album, eh Sarah?
- Dave, cumbria
I am glad that a sense of reality is set to return to US / UK relations. The fact is, we have very little in common as nations and don't even get on very well either. I work in an international company and have worked with many Americans over the years as well as Europeans. What has always struck me is how little I have had in common with my American colleagues apart from sharing the same language. I have always found my French, German and Italian business contacts far easier to relate to.
- Matt, London UK
