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Saturday 22 November 2008

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Will the special relationship prevail?

As the US presidential race gathers steam, Westminster is abuzz.  Like the Derby Trials, MPs across the political spectrum are watching their horses anxiously.  Some are seasoned observers.  They know the trainers and even the thoroughbreds themselves.  Others are more recent spectators, but with no less passion.  The outcome of the presidential election matters in Westminster, for the course of US policy certainly, but also for UK domestic politics.

‘There are a number of female Tory MPs, more to the right than I am, who have supported Hillary for ages’ insists Burns.  Could this be evidence of a growing constituency for the Democrats?  ‘There’s a growing constituency within Simon Burns’ snapped Fox, who considers this Clintonista within his ranks pure aberration.  But Conservative support, at least for Obama, is widespread.  As one Tory MP put it, ‘in the same way that Obama offers America the chance to put some of its turbulent past behind it, a number of younger Conservatives resent the way that their party is sometimes seen as reactionary.  Support for Obama is a chance to exorcise certain ghosts.’ As with McCain, a gentle nod to Obama is an attempt to mark Cameron out as a different kind of Tory leader.  To his critics, Cameron is ‘playing with fire’, risking long term Republican ire for the sake of fleeting domestic popularity.  Any further overtures to the Democrats, they warn, and a Republican victory in November could leave Cameron frozen out in Washington, a dangerous situation in the run up to the next British General Election.

These fears, while real enough, should not be taken too far.  As Fox stressed, “the ‘special relationship’ is too important to belong to any particular party, or to be dependent on the personal relationship of individuals’.  Pre-existing ties can alter the relationship in degree but rarely in kind.  Calculations of national interest by incumbent governments are, of course, crucial to its continuity.  But so is early intimate knowledge of a new President’s inner circle.  Here, the British Embassy in Washington, DC comes into its own.

More articles from: Dan Collings | this section

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