Brown's world

Gordon Brown’s Mansion House speech tonight will be pored over for hints about the direction of British foreign policy.  As Jackie Ashley, a columnist normally sympathetic to the Prime Minister, writes in The Guardian, “Brown's "vision" for foreign policy remains even more opaque than his domestic vision.”

There is no desire in Downing Street for the Brown premiership to become as defined by foreign policy as Blair’s was. But as Tim Hames argues in The Times the moment of decision coming down the track on Iran, means that Brown might well have to make a fundamental choice on foreign policy before the next election.   

To date, Brown seems determined not to box himself in. So while his language on Iran will remain less absolutist than Jack Straw’s he also won’t say anything that can be seen as sabre-rattling.