DC's trip to DC

Tiberius

Detached, James, or is it more a case that Cameron simply avoids protesting too much?

General Zod

DC is unlikely to be seen chasing Obama desperately through a hotel kitchen.

Being more serious, it is time to stop bleating about a "special relationship" that has never seemed so special to the Americans. We have much in common, but we will always have our differences.

TomTom

The USA entered the 20th Century with one overriding aim; to usurp the British Empire and seize its raw materials and markets. Two World Wars declared by Britain handed everything to the USA and produced a British satrapy subservient to US interests and enduring repeated humiliation from the US Government.

Cameron will no doubt continue this tradition pledging "a blood price" to show how willingly British politicians curry favour. Steve Hilton has no doubt choreographed the whole performance

JohnOfEnfield

Cameron has become very statesmanlike since his elevation to power. Hague is also a great pragmatist.

Obamah is still campaigning, even 18 months of his election. He is incredibly divisive and not a diplomat. He is certainly not a statesman.

I sense that there will be no great meeting of minds and a very rapid separation of interests.

yank

"Can a more detached approach deliver a relationship of the same strength—and with the same benefits for the world—as the more romantic ones have?"

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The "romantic" approaches were detached... check the history books, as opposed to the hagiographies.

That's the secret here, and we'll see if Cameron has the good sense to recognize this plain fact.

Victor Southern

President Obama nurses a lifetime grudge against the British for the alleged torture of his grandfather at the time of the Mau-Mau uprising. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of this legend by the way - at best we have a story that might have happened. However, David Cameron is not there to promote the best interests of the USA [as Blair used to] but what he perceives as the best interests of the UK.

Those interest may lie quite far apart so it is not necessary that the two men have some God-given meeting of the minds, only that they each speak their mind.

lescam

There is no "special relationship", and there never has been. The US views Britain just as any other country, no better and no worse. The SR is a purely imaginary concept in the eyes of British politicians.

And about the only thing we Brits have in common with the US is the language. Nothing else. They are just as much a foreign country as anywhere else in the world.

I enjoy visiting the US and I like most Americans, but I don't think of them as blood brothers, but as foreigners. Presumably they think of us in the same way. Let's forget this nonsense about a SR. It never existed.

Andrew Cadman

I'm with Lescam.

The whole Special Relationship nonsense is utterly embarassing, kept alive by people who simply cant see the truth: namely that we are a regarded as a small country that rarely features on their radar screens apart from TV adaptations of Ye Olde Costume Dramas etc.

Show me a believer in the special relationship and I'll show you a pyschologically inadequate personality. You simply cannot show any historical evidence for its existence at all.

TGF UKIP

Cameron like most of the "One Nation" gang is instinctively more europhile than transatlantic and with their social democratic leanings far more at home with Democrats than with the GOP.

On the Falklands and BP Obama has demonstrated his enmity for the British and as for his grandfather he was from all accounts exactly the same sort of left wing shitstirrer as the grandson. Just a pity the Forces of the Crown didn't chop grandaddy's balls off.

Lee Jakeman

Whatever the rights and wrongs of British action in Kenya, it doesn't alter the fact that the Mau Mau were the most brutal, barbaric load of savages in living memory. This doesn't justify British actions, but it does help you to understand them.

Verity

I guar-un-tee, Dave the pretentious will come home with new ideas of how to become more presidential.

We will see a new style of WhiteHousespeak flowing out of Downing St and an upgraded sense of self-importance in creepy (unelected) Dave.

Mark my words.

Beer Moth

I hear the repeated assertions that the US is 'just another country', and that there is and always was, nothing which binds us.

This overlooks the fact that we have historic links which go back to the founding of the American - what we could refer to as - 'project'.

The 'we' I refer to is not just the British. Europeans built what the US is today and the British strand of European culture, was at the forefront of that construction. Americans, with all of their more recent influences, 'are from us'. What they do and how they look upon life, and how that is expressed, naturally runs alongside our own outlook.

Yes, they took our Empire, but someone had to: we had run out of ideas and much of our thrust had physically moved away, literally with their wives and children, to, amongst other places, America. We must also ask ourselves whether we would have been better off, having lost our Empire, to have been annexed by the Third Reich; the avoidance of which required sacrifices on the part of the American people, far beyond anything required, merely to assert US power and usurp our dominant position.

I think that beyond the antics of our respective administrations, and their fleeting personalities, and despite the detractors here and elsewhere, the continued yoke between Americans and we of these islands, is something we are rather stuck with as much as anything. It is not a ruling. Nothing about it is forever. But yes, rumours of its death and all that.

Yam Yam

I take Lescam's point, and we Brits would do well not to overly glamorise our relationship with the United States.

However, the fact remains that many Americans still instinctive cleave to their historical and cultural Anglo-Saxon roots. After all, Britain would have been stuffed during the Falklands War had US defense secretary and incorrigible Anglophile, Cap Weinberger, not used his influence to tilt the Reagan White House unequivocally towards supporting our cause - morally, diplomatically and (most importantly) through the generous offer of some important military and intelligence assets.

David Bouvier

The "Special Relationship" has really always referred to nuclear and intelligence cooperation, which continues.

I also believe the Anglosphere, which contains a large proportion of the places people with a choice choose to live, has some common interests and characteristics.

Even South Africa, India, etc are regional beacons of hope

Rhoda Klapp

"many Americans still instinctive cleave to their historical and cultural Anglo-Saxon roots"

I've met African-Americans, Italian-Americans, Greek and Turk and Czech and double-check Americans. (bet nobody can tell me the source of that) but I've never met an English-American. Is that the default, or are they ashamed?

Clear Memories

I don't see Cameron has any real problems. BP is more an American Co. than British, tell the Obamarxist its more his problem than ours.

Everything else - the various illegal wars, Libyan murderers etc is all Labours fault, mainly down to Americas favourite warmonger, Blair.

For the past 13 years or so, Labour have consistently (and pointlessly) blamed Thatcher/'the Tories' for whatever problem arose. Time for DC to repay the favour. Every problem we have is Labours fault, except the root of the economic crisis, which is America's fault, made worse by the now-invisible Scot.

Verity

As soon as Obama is gone, in around two years, and sinking without trace (I wonder what his post-presidential career will be? Jimmuh Cahdah builds houses for the poor, although most of them write books) Britain, under the next PM ought to apply to become the 51st state.

I have written this before. If we are to be subsumed by the population of a large landmass, it should be within a country with whom we have familial ties and not the ever-alien continent of Europe with its Napoleonic laws and penchant for dictators and revolutions and the Eurovision Song Contest.

We are no further - actually, we're closer - than Hawaii on the Pacific side, and about equidistant, I think to Alaska to the north.

America is still a democracy. The EU is already ponging like the dictatorship it will eventually become, a la the USSR.

Rhoda K - in some parts of the country, particularly the South, yes, British is the default.

yank

Ms. Klapp,

The moment you meet somebody who yelps about being a hyphenated American, you should take it as a warning sign, of political correctness and/or special pleading.

Your average Englishman is above all this, would be my guess.

Boudicca

Angle-Saxon Roots? They have far more Scots and Irish roots than Anglo-Saxon.

I hope Cameron tells Obama that the UK will be developing other 'special relationships' which are in our own interests as a nation. We remain an ally of the USA but our intersts now come first.

I wish Cameron would tell the EU exactly the same thing.

We should be developing our links with the Anglo-Commonwealth and India and using them to strengthen ties with China, Brazil and the other developing nations. The future doesn't lie in a debt-ridden Obama-run USA or the EU - it lies in the East and in the developing nations. Britain's may have lost its empire, but we are well-placed to exploit its history. We just need the courage to go it alone without kow-towing to the Yanks all the time or bending the knee to Brussels.

Ahmed Khan

There was nothing barbaric about the Mou-Mou. My father served 2 years National Service to counter the Mou-Mou, and he insists that it was us the British who were in wrong. The Mou-Mou was a freedom organization fighting for independence who then were happy to kill, rape and maim Kenyan woman and children and then run off into the British Embassy to be moved to the UK.

It might came as news to many Coffee Houser’s but we did not colonise so many countries by being the nice guys, in fact we were actually thugs and rapist quite happy to kill the defenseless and then run off to the safe enclave of the British Embassy.

Amiristar in India is a good example of this behavior. General Dyer ordered his troops to block off all escape routes to the Janiwala Baag and ordered his troops to fire at the thickest part of the peaceful protest by mainly woman and children. A total of 1710 bullets fired resulting in 1634 deaths.

What happen to General Dyer? Smuggled out of Indian and eventually (thankful) shot to death in Parliament by one of the survivors.

Rhoda Klapp

I don't see the need to have favoured nationss, we should treat all equally well, except those which we have nothing to do with because, for example, we can't return criminals there because they mistreat them.

I do see the need to treat UK citizens in the UK more favourably than any bloody Tom Dick and Harry who washes up here, but it seems the government does not see that need.

Fergus Pickering

Ahmed Khan. Plainly you know nothing about it and your father told you a load of bollocks. The mau-mau were savages and did barbaric things as a matter of course. I shall not enumerate their atrocities, but you can, if you wish. The facts are all there.

Beer Moth

Ahmed Khan

Who is this 'we'?

Ahmed Khan

@Fergus Pickering – Obviously you did not a history teacher or are just Illiterate buffoon. Can you tell me what the hell Britain was doing in Kenya (I suppose you think we were there on a Safari Holiday)

@Beer Moth – your comment reeks of colonial arrogance and its pointless to respond to a bigot. I think your name says everything about yourself, obviously your brain has been pickled in Beer for too long to take you seriously.

Noa Zrk

Ahmed Khan July 20th, 2010 6:11pm

"There was nothing barbaric about the Mou-Mou. My father served 2 years National Service to counter the Mou-Mou, and he insists that it was us the British who were in wrong. The Mou-Mou was a freedom organization fighting for independence who then were happy to kill, rape and maim Kenyan woman and children and then run off into the British Embassy to be moved to the UK.."

Your above statement does not make sense. Who are these killers and rapists? The Mau Mau, the then Kenyan authorities, or the British army in which your father was serving?

Mycroft

Ahmed Khan, your mistake is to confuse the worst with the typical; the official enquiry found against him and he was relieved of his command. Dyer was not shot by one of the survivors, he died of a cerbral hemorrhage. I assume that you must have muddled this up with Uddam Singh's murder of the former Govenor of the Punjab.